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EDITORIAL NOTES

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EDITORIAL NOTES It is reported that Lord HERBERT VANE TEMPEST has purchased two slate quarries in Montgomeryshire which will afford work for 350 men who would otherwise have been unemployed. Bald. ratepayers as well as those of Aberystwyth and some other places are face to face with a secret system of tran- sacting business. It is not an easy or pleasant thing to fight for the people, but if public life is to be purified that work must be done. » There was a circular letter placed be- fore Pwllheli Council at the last meeting suggesting a conference on Sunday ob- servance. How many men get paid for six days' work a week, and then get paid for preaching on Sundays. « Nobody seems to have found out what the Welsh Church Commission is expected to do. Both sides have a reasonable right to give evidence. This means that the present generation will have wholly passed away before the evidence—quite worth- less—is completed. On Wednesday there was great trouble. Mr S. T. EVANS was in revolt. The wretched fiasco should be brought to a conclusion. The inhabitants of towns who have urban councils should bestir themselves if they want to secure reforms. The elec- tions are in March. What the people have to be taught is that health and life are worth more than a penny or twopenny rate. Nobody in Cardiganshire need be afraid of the new Dog Act, for the County Council has not put it in force. Dogs can worry sheep on the hills, be a curse in towns, and evade the tax. It takes a lot to move the Cardiganshire County Council towards reform. There are other beneficial acts whicjli that public body has not put in force. » Mr KErR HARDIE recently visited Cam- bridge. The students created disturb- ances and prevented free speech. We have never got to know why students of universities should behave in ways that would disgrace street-corner men. And yet they are supposed to be gentlemen. A letter of repudiation has been written by the Presidents of the political and athletic clubs. There is a very simple and effective remedy for this sort of vul- gar brutality. & Attention has once more been called in Parliament to the fact that railway com- panies give lower preferential rates to importers and foreign manufacturers than are granted to native producers and manufacturers. These low preferential rates are always denied, but they are well known to exist. Where railways have a monopoly they abuse it. Where they have competition they cut the rates. The evil goes on as a large number of members of Parliament are directors of railway companies and a larger number still are shareholders. The death-rate of Dolgelley is higher than the death-rate of similar places. About seven or eight persons die in Dolgelley every year owing to the ineptitude of the local govern- ing body who would not die if they happened to live in a well-managed com- munity. Young people leave for other places and old people are left. Dolgelley scorns such a place as an isolation hospi- tal and the place to which the High Court Judge called attention does not require argument. Our name for the excessive death-rate of Dolgelley is municipal mur- der. We are sorry for the MEDICAL OFFICER who tries in vain to save the people. The ignorance of the members of the Council is too great for him. What! Save the lives of the people at the ex- penditure of a little money? Certainly not. # In Swansea, it seems, there has been a reduction of sixty-seven public houses and an increase of drunken cases of sixty-five in 1906 over 1905. We have never be- lieved in the reduction of the number of public houses as a means of increasing sobriety, nor do we believe in the sub- stitution of clubs for public houses as a means of decreasing drunkenness. Tem- perance reformers are, we believe, on the wrong track, but it is probably unavoid- able that wrong ways of trying to do right should be pursued until tem- perance reformers discover that in- sobriety is more an effect than a cause. One or two public houses in a town like Aberystwyth would supply all the drink necessary to make the people the most drunken in Wales. The closing of a public house no more reduces the amount of drink consumed than the clos- ing of an unnecessary grocer's shop would reduce the amount of tea consumed. At Aberystw3rth a public house is closed one day and a public house is enlarged next day! tt it In the course of a. speech at Lancaster, Mr Ivan: HAHDIE, chairman of the Labour Party, said "he wished to say that he did "not seek the position of chairman, and "he should not again be a candidate for "the position at the beginning of next "session. He had always felt that the "chairmanship of the Labour movement "was too big to be a one-man job. What- ever honour, responsibility, and work "attached to the position of chairman of the Labour Party of the House of Com- "mons should go round among the mem- "bers. By that means he was certain they would preserve harmony in their ranks, "and each man would then be appointed "on his own merits and not bpcause of "some fictitious value attached to the "office he occupied. There is no greater curse in public TIfe than the permanent chairman—the fixed honour grabber. The surest way to arrest growth and develop- ment in an institution or community is to permanently keep the same person in the place of honour. If Mr. Klun HARDIE refuses to monopolise the chair- manship of the Labour Party he will do himself honour and the Labour Party great service. A permanent Mayor paralyses a town, a permanent chairman deadens an institution. Then there is the enormous impertinence or the indivi- dual who has the effrontery to monopolise the place of honour. Sooner or later the work of reorganisation will have to he undertaken. Sir EDWARD PRYSE, Gogerddan, and others may be interested in knowing that a Manchester daily paper describes that historic place as "Zogenddan." The ratepayers of Barmouth are not very wise. They pay large sums in in- terest for overdrafts and in the end they have to pay the overdrafts also. The motto at Barmouth seems to be never to pay to-day what can be left unpaid till to-morrow and then pay interest as well. This is a silly sort of policy. In a recent speech, Mr KEIR HARDIE said that in a Yorkshire constituency the Liberal candidate went round the Dis*- senting chapels in his constituency and paid off their debts. That sort of thing in other forms is a great evil. Where, for instance, is now the lavish distribu- tion of money in the Carnarvon Boroughs which was so prominent before the last general election ? Lord PENRHYN on Monday gave a bonus of ten per cent to the 3,000 workmen em- ployed at his Bethesda slate quarries, as a help for loss of time during the past month through inclement weather. This is not the first or second time that his lordship has helped the men through these avowedly hard times. Where are his critics now? f < At Newcastle Emlyn, as in so many other places, there is no regard paid to tidiness. The castle grounds are—well —'let the people go and look at them. As usual the rates have been reduced with the result that necessary work cannot be done. This is short-sighted policy and means penny wise and pound foolish in all sorts of ways. Is there not one wise man who will speak up at Newcastle Emlyn on behalf of municipal cleanliness? The weather during the week has been fiercely cold, wet, and stormy. Wednesday was a bright and pleasant day. The country has not looked so black and withered for many years. There are signs-not yet very pronounced—that spring is coming. We do not remember a period when the winter was so long and so severe. The poor have suffered greatly but without complaint. Complaints are rife of bad times and many people find it difficult to make both ends meet. It was stated at the last meeting of the Penrhyndeudraeth Guardians that two children had been turned out of school in the Trawsfynydd district be- cause of dilapidated boots. Nothing was proved. This is a matter that should be sifted, and Mr D. T. JONES, who brought the matter forward, ought to fol- low it up. First of all, children should not be without boots and if they are without boots they ought not to be turned out of the school seeing that at- tendance is compulsory. Mr. Bill for relieving the Local Education Authority of the cost of speoian religious instruction in non-pTo- vided schools was introduced on Tuesday night in the House of Commons. It is intended to remove one particnilar griev- ance. The teacher will continue to re- ceive his full salary, and the local educa- tion authority will recover fifteenper cent from the managers, and if they decline to pay it the school will cease to be recognised as a public elementary schooL < The state of Portmadoc is causing the more thoughtful inhabitants a good deal of anxiety. As in many other places there are many people in Portmadoc wil- ling to live in filth and misery and to sacrifice other people's lives in order to keep down the local rates. There is the Gas Works question. Then there is the sewerage question. We intend to write an article next week on the position of Portmadoc. In the meantime the people should see that Mr. JONATHAN DAVIES is made sure of election on the 25th of March. A Cardiff paper says that "Merioneth "has a larger proportion of her children at the secondary schools than any county "in Wales. They number eleven out of "every 1,000 of the population. It is "doubtful if this high standard is at- tained in Scotland, and certainly it is "not found in any county in England." Does not our Cardiff contemporary see in the foregoing fact and others of a similar kind the reasons why North Wales holds its high position. What a pity it is that Cardiff is not in North Wales1 Mr. HALDANE'S army reform proposals have been favourably received throughout the country. What nobody seems to realise is that this so-called Christian country, two thousand years after the life of CHRIST, is paying more than sixty mil- lions a year for armaments. No wonder there are hundreds of thousands of starv- ing poor. There can be no doubt about the fact that the volunteers are to be made a real military force. What will happen to the militia is not quite clear. We think there will be fewer volunteers under the Bill. A woman was fined 20s., with 44s. costs, at Westminster Police Court the other day, for defrauding the South- western Railway by travelling on their line with intent to avoid payment. The defendant, who has conducted a Bible class and mission for local railway ser- vants, journeyed from Wimbledon to Vauxhall, and then, with a shilling ready in "her hand, told the collector to take the fare only from Clapham Junc- tion. It was added that after three mis- statements, she wrote a letter to the Company "full of pious protestations." She had been cautioned before. It is astounding how easily people justify themselves for obvious fraud. There are thousands of people who think that they have a right to break the law if they break it with good intentions! v Mr. HALDANE made a speech last week at the dinner of the Glamorgan Society in London. He said "that once in the "course of his political life he went to make a political speech in Wales. The "meeting preferred its own tongue, but "he spoke in English, and for the lest I "of the proceedings he recognised only "one word, and that was 'Jerusalem.' There was between 'he Welsh "and the Scotch one thing in common. "They were both oppressed nationalities. "They struggled with the majority, and "yet the voice of Wales and the voice of "Scotland were not unheard in the coun- There was between the Welsh "men had every reason to be proud of "the fact that within a comparatively "short time they had risen to the very "highest place by their zeal and the "manner in which they had organised "themselves for a good cause, the "establishment of the Welsh University." What will Mr.. HALDANE think when Wales demands at the very least two more universities? We agree with him that Wales has no reason to look backi upon the last quarter of a century with anything but pride. On Wednesday, in the House of Com- mons, Mr EVERETT moved "That, in the "interests alike of religion and the nation, "it is desirable to disestablish and dis- endow the Church of England both in "England and Wales." The motion was carried by a majority of 108. The Brigg by-election has resulted in the return of the Conservative candidate, Sir BERKELEY SHEFFIELD, by a majority of 116. In 1906 the Liberal majority was 1,726. This result was not expected and the Liberal Cardiff paper had made ar- rangements for publishing the Liberal candidate's portrait and did publish it, but had to put the word "unsuccessful" under it! One of the hopes of educationists in Wales was that the institution of a Welsh Education Department would bring about the abolition of that abortion the Central Welsh Board. If the Central Welsh Board is to continue it will be difficult to say what the new department will find to do of any oonsequence. We hoped the new department was to do efficiently the work which the Central Welsh Board has practically nev. done at all. Nine- tenths of the intermediate schools in Wales are nothing better than glorified elementary schools for the children of snobs. What can be said of schemes which provide that children who have passed the third standard, as in Cardi- ganshire, shall be eligible for admission to intermediate schools. If the Central Welsh Board is all that its CHAIRMAN al- leges it to be, why in the name of in- competence establish another education department? The fact is that education in Wales is in a chaotic state and re- quires reorganising from the infant school at the bottom to the Welsh Uni- j versity at the top. We think it is a disastrous thing for Liberalism when Conservatism or Liberal- ism has no effective voice in public affairs. In Wales, for instance, there is not a single Conservative member of Parliament, and Conservative County Councillors and Town Councillors are few and far between. The Conservatives of the United Kingdom are setting about the work of reorganisation in good earn- est, but it does not seem to us that organisation where they are deficient and that is what their new principal agent of the party, Mr J. P. HUGHES, ought to discover. Look at Wales. There is a wide gulf between Conserva- tives and Liberals which no organisation however complete can pass. The par- son, the landowner, the village autocrat, the unapproachable peer, the contemp- tuous superior person of low degree give point and earnestness to Liberalism. The Established Church, the Tory House of Lords, the excessive armaments, the mono- poly of place, power, and privilege, the tyrannous land laws, the helplessness of the poor, the arrogance of the rich—these are not to be made acceptable to the mil- lions of the people by Conservative organi- sation. We are afraid that as popular education spreads, the hatred of the masses for the classes becomes more in- tense. If the Conservative party could be greatly strengthened on its present un- popular lines it is revolution and not Liberalism that would have to be facea. This is what the prominent men of the party do not seem to realise.

~TKEGAiiOiS

, NEW QUAi

I MYDROILYN

MACHYNLLETH

LANON

PONTERWYD

DOLGELLEY

PONTRHYDFENDIGAID

ABERDOVEY

TOWYN

TLASGELER HARRIERS.

[No title]

TALYBOINT

MACHYNLLETH

LAMPETER

GTotrespnrtbenxe.

THREE SIDES OF WOMEN'S FRANCHISE.