THE BUILDING SOCIETY MOVEMENT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22220, 24 March 1934, Page 4

THE BUILDING SOCIETY MOVEMENT

"Brick Upon Brick : Fifty Years of the Co-operative Permanent Building Society." By Albert Mansbridge, C.H., LL.D. Illustrated. London: Dent (8s net).

This book puts before the reader the amazing story of the growth of the building .society movement in Great Britain, a movement which has been of inestimable benefit to thousands of families, has worked a vast change in public opinion on the subject of home-building, and has contributed more perhaps than any other factor to the improvement iu housing conditions in the last 50 years. These 50 years have seen the establishment of many building societies, and a general view of their purpose and importance is provided by this book. The society with which the book is primarily concerned, Co-operative ' Permanent Building Society, was founded in 1884, a huinple offshoot of the Guild of Co-operators, under the presidency of Thomas Edward Burgess Webb. To-day it has the sixth largest assets of all the 1014 registered building societies in Great Britain, it has 100,000 members and depositors, and a staff of 170 workers. The society's rise and consolidation makes an,, interesting story, and Dr Mansbridge, one of its early members and a director since 1910, is finely qualified to tell it. As a founder of the Workers' Educational Association and the National Central Library, he is fully conscious of the sociological importance of his theme, but he has not allowed this to submerge the human interest that lies behind such an undertaking. The book is well documented, and gives a careful narrative of the society's history, as well as general chapters on the purpose and ideals of the building society movement and its value to English social life and work. There are over 30 full-page illustrations reproduced in photogravure.

Ohe-Act Plays

For the third annual volume of oneact plays of his choice, Mr J. W. Marriott has selected work by the following authors: Harold Brighouse, Dan Totheroh, Jane Cran, A. J. Talbot, Harold Michael, Eileen Russell,.Olive Conway, Cormac Simpson, F. . Sladen-Smith, Graham Sutton, Neil Grant, and Henry Bordeaux, the play by the last-named being translated from the French. Harrop is publishing under the title "The Best Oneact Plays of 1933." \j

A Japanese Publisher "The Magazine King of Japan," Seiji Nonia, whose monthly journals, with their total circulations exceeding 10.000,000 copies, fill every bookstall throughout his country with more than half its stock-in-trade/ has 'written his reminiscences, which Methuen's are bringing out under the title "The Nine Magazines of ..Kodansha: The Autobiography of a Japanese Publisher." A man of large ideas, and proportionately big in physique—he is twice the size of the average Japanese '-Seiji Noma not only tells the story of his publishing career, with memories of a boyhood in the old pre-Restoration days of daimyo and samurai, but also paints . a picture of Japanese domestic and business life.

" Sherlockholmitos " The complex, branch of scientific research for which the word " Sherlockjiolmitos" has been coined will shortly produce a new work entitled "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes," by Mr Vincent. Starrett, announced by Ivor Nicholson and Watson. Having ransacked the adventures from end to end, the author sets forth afresh all the available evidence as to Holmes's ancestry and education, together with a list of his monographs, including the famous treatise on the 140 varieties' of. tobacco ash. There are snapshots, too, of Dr Watson and even of Mrs Hudson, all rounded off by a critical study of -their creator,, and a full bibliography. .