CIVIC LEAGUE

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 197, 20 August 1919, Page 12

CIVIC LEAGUE

making nothing but a fetish of this home-life craze. What home work wanted was simplifying.

The monthly meeting of the Civi< League was hi-kl in the Y.W.C.A. BuildMiss ilel

ings on Monday evening.

ville presided. An apology was received from the Hon. I'OwldtJ, who wus to speak on citizenship, for unavoidable absence. The subject of new premises for the League were gone into, and

various members reported upon tiie shortage of any kind of rooms euitable for meetings being obtained at, a moderate rcm. A paner nas read by .Airs. Midulebruok u;i "iiouie Life,' , wluch led to an animated diacuribi-on. Miii. Duprce repeated the opinion of a wellknown Frenchman she iiad been talking to thin week, who said that the great lack in Auckland wa.s home life lie it wuci known in France, and who gave it as his opinion that the people, must make an elloit to make their homes beautiful. .Mies Melville objected to the opinion expressed iluit the business girl war, a failure ar> a house mother. She gave it as her expressed opinion that in many cases they were the beat home-keepers, as they brought to it trained intelligence and accredited methods. In Auckland practically every girl does housework in her home. More girt and women wen; thinking seriously than ever before, and this. she considered a great advance. Mrs. J. M. Williamson caid ehe was ■brought up at the time when there was no opening uiiteidc teaching available for women, and a governess earned £30 a year, and she had lived on through the. time when women haaj made a great push into the professions, and the was proud to see it. She did not like to hear women talk as if women were only meant for homemakers. In her youth she remembered families \\ J !iere the brother could not marry because there were two or three tsiatercs at home to be kept, and if they did not marry they bore a stigma and were dependent all tlujir lives. She thought it was time that women recognised that the war had proved tluit woman had made good nnd could do anything if she tried. This nonsense nb.iut teaching children hourp-work in schools she had no patience with. Train them to use their brains and apply it to their daily life; that was what, the country needed. She looked to the time when the foolishness of every individual woman ben-ding over every individual tftuve. a* in New Zealand,"would be done away with, as it wars to v grnu-t extent, .-he found, in America. Another member, in speaking on the teaching in the Technical School, said her little daughter asked her for a soiled serviette to take- to tehool to u-uah. and she found out that it took two hours. The next time it was ironed, and another two hours was taken up. She laughingly explained that rJie could teach her by doing the family wash any time an.l much quicker. The teaching wa« just a farce. What should be taught at the Technical School was utility. \- nother little daughter reported t.iat they had been poaclhing eirjis all day. Kg4i were then 3/ a dozen. If the. children were given any useful knowledge, well and good, but she thought we ivere