ECONOMIC CHANGE

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2384, 13 February 1915, Page 9

ECONOMIC CHANGE

THE OLD ENGLISH VILLAGE.

A lecture ontitted "The Old English Village" wafi delivered in the Town Hall Concert Chamber last night by Mr. Meredith Atkinson, organising secretary, of the Workers' Educational Association. ' . Mr. Atkinson spoke of the origin, fjrowth, aid development of the Englsh village,-'its decay, and some little about its present condition. Tlio _ lecture was illustrated by' lantern slides.' nearly all reproductions of authentic sketches from well-known collections. In rapid review the .lecturer • described the imposition upon the Saxon system of land settlement, of the Norman highly developed feudal system. He showed how every modification of this system brought about by the changing econoraio conditions of England worked ill for , the lower classes in the manor communities, how the whole social fabric was more or less destroyed by the visitation of the Black Death, and how from tiino to time the lot of the tiller of the soil was made jvorse. His con-, elusion .was that under no circumstances must economic changes be allowed to come about in a haphazard way in future. He did not hark back to any period as being the golden age of the villago community. All he set out to show >vas that. as each succeeding system showed imperfections, which became increasingly apparent in changing conditions, it must give way to some other system showing some elements of improvement upon it. No economic change had been effective hitherto without effecting grievous disability to tho lowest 'class of the community, and the object of an educated democraoy should be to-see that liothing should bS left to chance, but that changes to be made should be directed by tlio will of the people for tho good of all the people.