"FOR THE MOTHERS."

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 258, 31 October 1928, Page 11

"FOR THE MOTHERS."

MRS. PATTERSON'S STAND.

GREY LYNN INDEPENDENT.

"FOOD, CLOTHES AND SHELTER."

"I stand four square for food, clothes and shelter" was the burden of the open air address given at the Zoo tram terminus last night by Mrs. Patterson, the independent Labour candidate for the Grey Lynn seat. "I don't represent a policy; I represent the mother's point of view. Here we women have had the franchise for thirty-five years, and all tiie use they have made of us is to get us to conie out every three years and canvass for votes for Mr. So-and-so. l ve done share of it> and x tJlhik k is tune we had some women in the House to voice our side of the question."

Particularly feminine questions instanced by Mrs. Patterson were the ternble rate -of mortality among mothers, the high price of meat ana other necessaries, and the Mental Defectives Act, recently passed. She said tJiat Act made it possible for one's child to be taken away from one. She wondered at the Labour party putting up with soup-kitchens and doss-houses° Unemployment was rife, but nothing was done to cure it. The land should be opened up and public work such as roads should be gone on with. The national debt had reached an awful stage, but she realised that they must borrow. However, she would not <*o outside for £70,000,000, she would borrow the money in New Zealand, or if necessary the money could be conscripted —there was plenty of it—and the owners should be given a small ra£e of interest. The working people were simply working for the capitalist. She wondered the Labour party stood it all. Why did they not vote solid? V ore-Splitting. A Voice: Why are you splitting votes, taking them from Bartram? The candidate said she was just as much entitled to com© out as anyone else. She was all for Labour, but she thought it was time that the mothers of the nation were represented in Parliament.

A persistent voice in the circle of perhaps eighty people, men, women and children, that gathered round Mrs. Patterson standing on a box in a grocer's doorway, stressed this question of votesplitting.

Mrs. Patterson: Why don't you vote solid? If you had voted solid we would have had seventeen Labour men in the City CounciL Why don't you vote solid ?

The Voiee: Because I haven't got a vote. (Which was rather obvious, as the voice belonged to a schoolboy who took quite a keen interest in the meeting, and several times gave the candidate advice how to deal with the capitalists, the Coates Government, and the proper education of the masses, so as to fit them to hold their own against the capitalists.) A strong point of Mrs. Patterson's was that Parliament should sit in the daytime, and not at night, when things were rushed through. The Woman's Last Word. Another persistent interrupter suggested the members thought about the different measures recess, and had their fully worked out when they went to the House. Anyhow, it would be worse if women got into Parliament. Mrs. Patterson: How's that? The Interrupter: Because the woman always has the last word. Mrs. Patterson ignored the would-be facetious remarks, and said she was in earnest. She had worked for Labour all her life, and could not understand how women could stand round a ring and giggle when serious subjects like maternal mortality and the unemployment question were being dealt with. Having spoken for two hours Mrs. Patterson answered several questions, but declined to formulate any policy other than that she stood for the mothers of .the nation.

The candidate was so obviously sincere, even if it was all rather vague, that the audience deprecated any unchivalrous heckling. At the close one man moved a vote of thanks "for the evening's entertainment," at which there was some clapping, but most of the bystanders rather resented this style of sarcasm. However, the meeting fizzled out, and people drifted home, and as far as one could judge the political situation in Grey Lynn is just about where it was before the meeting began.