twelve times the actual necessary cost of transport. The extreme of economy can only be secured by all processes, down to the completion of the finished article, being conducted in the locality whence the raw material is extracted. 'Combination' is a word of sinister import in matters of trade; ‘amalgamation' suggests the growth of a monopoly. Nevertheless there is a kind of combination which is almost entirely beneficial in its effect on the consumer; and such is the amalgamation which links into one undertaking all the successive steps in the career of a particular raw product from the ground to the ultimate articles for whose manufacture it is adapted. Let us suppose that a company owns its own ironstone mines, brings the ore in its own ships, unloads it on its own wharves, smelts it in its own furnaces, rolls it in its own mills, draws its own tubes, and constructs in its workshops the stoves, bedsteads, tools, and other articles ready for sale to the ultimate consumer. Such a company would occupy a position of independence not attainable by any manufacturer limiting himself to one branch of the trade. It would be in a great measure secure against unfair competition and indifferent to hostile tariffs. Capital invested in such a business would fulfil its primary function, which is to give stability to wages during all the fluctuations of trade. Furthermore, such a combination would reduce to a minimum the expense of transport and retransport of half-finished articles, and would deliver them to the consumer at the lowest price attainable. It has been a rather unfortunate habit of political economists to talk about transport as though it were of almost equal importance with production, and to quote with pride the vast figures of railway traffic and the like. It is well to remember that transport is at best the overcoming of an obstacle or a series of obstacles; and, if any one of such obstacles can be removed, humanity is thereby placed in a better position. JAMES CARLISLE, Art. 7.-ST BARTHOLOMEW'S HOSPITAL. The History of St Bartholomew's Hospital. By Sir MORE than two hundred years after the foundation of St Bartholomew's Hospital, the master, brethren and sisters claimed exemption from the payment of taxes. Their endowment was considerable, but insufficient to meet the expense of 'the sick poor coming into the hospital until well from their diseases, pregnant women coming in till able to get up after childbirth, the sustenance of the children thus born in the hospital till seven years of age should their mothers die, as well as various chantries and the maintenance of other almsdeeds, and the sustenance of the master, brethren and sisters.' This familiar story comes from the middle of the 14th century, the period of Crécy and Poitiers. The hospital of St Bartholomew is nearly eight hundred years old. Since the year 1123 it has looked on to Smithfield. Although the ancient buildings have gone long since, and the early constitution was rudely broken at the Reformation, its unbroken record of service is a more intimate part of the life and history of London than is the story of the Tower of London. The Conqueror's white fortress stood by the river in 1123 as it stands in 1919; but it was never part of London and has long ceased to have a part in the life of England. The strength of the hospital lay in something more enduring than stone. The citizens whose ancestors had seen its beginnings outside the walls in the days of the first Henry, took its work to themselves in the days of Henry VIII; and under their protection it resumed its ministry to women labouring with child, sick persons and young children. The splendid volumes which Sir Norman Moore has prepared as a gift to the hospital are an addition to the history of London and, less directly, to the history of mediæval England. His is no perfunctory or laboured exercise. It is full, leisurely, informed by wide and gracious learning. Sir Norman Moore is an authority on the history of medicine and a Celtic scholar of distinction, but during the last thirty years of a busy professional life he has found time for this gradual compilation in honour of St Bartholomew's. When he resigned the office of Senior Physician at the end of 1911, he could write : 'I began my service in the hospital in 1872 as House Physician, and have ever since continued its servant as Casualty Physician, Warden of the College, Lecturer on Comparative Anatomy, Demonstrator of Morbid Anatomy, Lecturer on Pathology, Assistant Physician, Lecturer on the Principles and Practice of Medicine, and Physician.' He is almost as familiar with the buildings and streets which once stood between Newgate and the bar of Smithfield as he is with the wards and offices of the existing hospital. He knows the history of each parcel of ground in the hospital's possession. He has not been content with long hours of study in the British Museum or among the muniments of St Paul's. He has traced the sites of forgotten London houses, and explored the Essex flats. He has made pilgrimages to places associated with the memory of early benefactors. How delightful such a study can be to a generous mind may be seen in the passage describing Sir Norman's visit to Beaumais, in Normandy: 'Richard de Beaumes or de Belmeis, Bishop of London, who aided Rahere [the Founder], was one of the great men of his time. He took his name from Beaumes, now Beaumais, a few miles from Falaise in Normandy. Beaumais is a scattered village built on lands which slope down to the river Dive; and on the higher ground stand the château, a building of the 16th century, and the church which was built early in the 12th. . . . Richard, Bishop of London, may have said Mass in this very church; and in grateful memory of him, as a benefactor of St Bartholomew's and of London, I left a bough of spindle wood, gay with crimson fruit, by the altar when I visited Beaumais. The orchards in which the houses of the village are embedded were bright with rosy apples, and the cheerful note of the green woodpecker was every now and then to be heard. A small corn-mill was worked by the Dive, the successor of that mentioned by Ordericus Vitalis. In a farmhouse there were a few tables spread for public meals. At one sat Agricola, whom I had seen at work in the fields with his mother. At another my wife and I had breakfast. . . . The son of the house, a courteous and well-read man, waited upon us, and we talked of Beaumais and of the debt of gratitude which St Bartholomew's Hospital in London owed to Richard of Beaumais, the bishop who befriended our founder. "I knew," said the Norman, "that the lord of Beaumais had gone to the conquest of England with William, but that we had produced a Bishop of London was a detail of which I was ignorant.' The history of the Hospital of St Bartholomew is divided into two periods, each of four centuries, by its legal re-foundation in January 1547, as the House of the Poor in West Smithfield. The good citizens who persuaded Henry VIII to allow them to undertake the control of these ancient endowments had memories of the useful service rendered by the hospital to the community. They were, moreover, in some anxiety by reason of the lack of provision for the sick and vagabond poor in their streets. The new order imposed new civic obligations. And so, together with Christ's Hospital, St Thomas's and Bridewell, St Bartholomew's came under the direction of the Aldermen and Common Council of the City of London. The process of transfer lasted nearly ten years. At first the King preferred to revive the hospital on a limited foundation under the control of his own nominees. This unsatisfactory scheme lasted less than three years (1544-7), and gave way to the permanent administration based upon a covenant between King and citizens. 'The constitution under which the hospital is ruled to this day was established in 1547, and confirmed, with an alteration in but one important particular, in 1782. Most of the offices created by the Deed of Covenant of December 1546 and the letters patent of January 1547 exist at the present day. The treasurer, the almoners, the physician, the surgeon, the rentar, the steward, the matron and sisters, the porter bearing a figure of St Bartholomew on his staff of office, and the beadles with silver badges engraved with the hospital arms, are all parts of the present life of the hospital.' † It would be easy to exaggerate the extent of the change. Municipal hospitals were common in mediæval |