WORKERS EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION

Evening Star, Issue 16998, 21 March 1919, Page 6

WORKERS EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION

_ The opening lecture of the winter session of the Workers' Educational Association was delivered at the University cm Wednesday evening by Archdeacon Woodthorpe. That there is no abatement in the interest taken in tho work of this important body was evidenced, by the fact that about 70 students enrolled on the first night. ' Social Economics, its Nature and Problems" was the title of the archdeacon's lecture. In summing up at the conclusion of his address, he said : In its development society has assumed several distinct and essentially different industrial phases, which have each changed the econjooiio structure of society, shifting the centre of industrial movement and the point of view of economic study. Under feudalism the land-owning class was the centre of all social and industrial movement. Economic policy, therefore, was considered from the standpoint of the land-owning class. With the development of manufacture and trade, however, came a radical change in economic relations. Serfe became wage receivers, and the cultivation of the land passed to tenant farmers, which change transferred the distribution of wealth from the domain of authority to that of economic law. Undor feudalism everything wo? viewed from the standpoint of the land-owner. After the industrial revolution it was considered from tho standpoint of the manufacturer and merchant, whose inoome was derived from trade. How to promote sales became the fundamental idea of commerce. To sell extensively necessitated cheap production. And since wages formed the greater part of tho cost of production, it appeared to many that cheap labor a3 well as cheap raw" material was required. Thuß, for example, Ricardo says : " It has been r.iy endeavor to show throughout this work that the ratio of profits can never be increased but by a fall in wages." To-day we have passed beyond this; great enterprises are dependent upon the demands not merely of the rich, but of the masses. ! Therefore, eays a patient student, George Gunton : " It is in the needs of the masses that tlie economics of the future must be studied and «*■ jsmanship determined." You may be i** rised at my boldness in giving a course of lectures on Social Economics -when you remember how few are the authorities to whom one can appeal. In the present state of Europe the fundamental fact we have to recognise is not the aristocratic, but the democratic basis of industry. We must study the economics of wealth and study it scientifically, but we cannot forget the end of nil study—the relation of w:ealfeh to human welfare. Instead of a system of " commodity " economics, which, justifies human degradation as a means of cheapening wealth, we must ihave a system of social economics, which should show that thj most effective means of promoting the industrial welfare of society on the strictly equitable basis, must be sought in influences which develop the wants and elevate the social life and character of the masses. We should thus have a sound economic and. broad social basis for intelligent, humane, and progressive States.