ABSTRACT
Written records are vital both to the recording of history and the expansion of administration. Administration, or the management of affairs, is the middle factor in all social activity, unspectacular but essential to its continuance. In simple communities the headman, or ruler, is the wielder of power, able to perform, or at least personally to direct, all the activities involved in running the show, or government. An analogy of the early unwritten stage of public administration can be discovered in the organization and government of tribal societies which have continued to exist side by side with our modern highly organized states. The interesting system of tribal administration embodies the process of division of labour which characterizes the rise of the official as a specialist administrative agent of the governing power. Administration, the work of the official in his several capacities, is a subordinate activity, devised to implement and to co-ordinate the policy-decisions of leader and community.
