W.E.A.

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 8, 10 July 1922, Page 3

W.E.A.

ECONOMIES CLASSES.

The class in elementary economics under the tutorship of Mr. E; P. Neale, M.A., LL.B., M. Com., F.S.S., of Victoria University College, completed the first half of the 1922 course last week. The lectures which were listened to with close attention are held weekly in. the Education Board rooms, Mercer-street, and are approximately of one ho'ir's duration. They are followed by a discussion, in which members of'th* class are given an opportunity to express their views and to make observations from their own experience and reading upon the subject ( matter of the tutor's remarks. Members of the class are also encouraged to ask questions of the tutor. So far the lectures have dealt mainly with production and money. The lecturer has traced the history of productive effort from the self-sufficient unit of the household in ancient times, and shown how the self-sufficing unit has gradually widened in a.rea so as to cover the manor, the town, the nation, and finally virtually the whole world. He has examined the importance from the productive standpoint of the gifts of nature, Labour, Capital, organisation, and risk : taking; he has traced the increasing division of labour and the use of machinery,, and the growth of "the large business," involving the gradual elimination in many spheres of business activity of competition as the dominant characteristic and substitutions /' therefor of monopoly and the trust. The gradual ©volution of money as a remedy for the inconveniences of barter has been traced; the relative merits and demerits of paper and metallic money have been considered. Mr. Neale is an acknowledged authority on statistical matters, and perhaps' the .most interesting of the lectures were those in which he explained the. measurement by means of index numbers, of changes in the purchasing power of money and in the cost of living, and traced the history of world prices during the past hundred years. The problems of inflation and -deflation, were also considered.)

In the remaining twelve lectures it is proposed to deal I with banking, foreign trade and exchanges, taxation, and other functions of the State, industrial problems, the unsolved riddle of the division of the product of industry (wages, rent, profits, and interest), and population. The class is open to visitors, and a numbers of non-members have availed 'themselves of the opportunity of being present at the meetings.