SOCIAL REFORMERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 16011, 1 September 1915, Page 4

SOCIAL REFORMERS.

1 - I j WORK OF GREAT WRITERS. i 1 - Ax interesting lecture, under the auspices cf the Workers' Educational Association, on " Great Writers as Social Reformers," i was delivered st the Trades Hall by Profeasor C. W. Egerton last nig St. Airs. Blundeil presided over a large attendance. ' The lecturer commented on the v.idencss of the subject, and said he could only deal with certain aspects of it. ( Problems cf social reform, he said, were :as old as society itself, and social re- ! formers had been active from the time of i Moses, at- least. Plato was a social rej former, and 2500 years ago he sketched, j in bis " Republic." his ideas of a perfect [ State. He solved a surprising number of burning questions of the present day. 1 .The first efforts of the literary reformer j appeared in 1360, but social reformers had ! little real influence before 1800, because j extreme caution was essential. Sir Thomas ( Mooro was an ardent reformer, but. in i his " Utopia" he had to be very discreet. j Husbandry, he urged, should he taupht to everyone by special instructors. He ! was one of the earliest to suggest the j establishment of a school of agriculture. Milton was hampered in his expression of his opinions by the censorship of books. Naturally he was a. strong advocate of the freedom "of the press, and his pamphlets contributed to the ultimate realisation of that ideal. In 1656, a society for the reformation of manners was formed, and in 40 years it instituted ICO-COO prose- ! cutions for drunkenness and various other offences. Public attention was directed to social evils by Defoe, Steele, Addison, Fielding. Dickens. Galsworthy, and other writers, and the frightful condition of the prisons of England was gradually improved. Literature materially aided social development as early as the beginning of tho eighteenth century, hut it v.-a» not '-until the beginning of the nineteenth centurv that its full effect began to be J felt, '