FEMINIST FORUM.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 261, 3 November 1928, Page 4 (Supplement)

FEMINIST FORUM.

THE BATTLE SET

THE POWER OF THE VOTE. (By a Feminist Correspondent.)

LONDON, September 19.

"Obviously the party that can capture the women's vote next summer rolls into power." Thus a leading writer in a London paper boomed yesterday. And who are we, mere women, to contradict them? There is in truth more than "a certain liveliness" about things political, for has not the great, the redoubtable Jix forced the Prime Minister, by striking an attitude and his breast—see Low's cartoons of Jix in his favourite frock coat—into awarding votes for flappers. No wonder that Birkenhead, disgusted, is deserting politics for journalism, when he, Birkenhead, who loathes the flapper vote, is derided and a Jix (Sir Joynson Hicks) policy installed.

But to come down to facts. Last night our Jix announced that every woman must do her duty at the polling booth, or he'll know the reason why. Twenty pounds without the option is to be the fate of every woman who dares ignore Jix's £20. look!

It was news to me, and I imagine lots of people, that in the last Act the Government was given power to compel registration. These powers, however, were not enforced at intervening elections. Now, it would appear, the Home Secretary has decided that he will use his powers. So imminent registration of Parliamentary voters—the whole adult population—ought to provide work for some of our unemployed. The poor harassed householder, who refuses to believe official figures of decreased cost of living, is thinking ruefully that he will have to foot the bill for putting 6,000,000 registration forms into circulation and getting them filled up. This, of course, is an official job, and Low's cartoon of Policeman Jix running in a female voter is very amusing.

There are others. Jix himself has been feverishly addressing letters to his constituents, and on House of Commons paper, but when rebuked replied that he was paying for stationery and stamps out of his own pocket. Jix, of course, is in the first flight as an electioneer; the rest are "also rans."

But the Liberal party, rising to the full opportunity of the moment, announces itself about to take a census of the national voting power, with the object of getting every potential Liberal voter on the register of next May—the register on which the general election will be fought. Here is audacity and energy. The party certainly deserves to rake in a goodly number of the newly enfranchised under thirties. There are thousands of women newly over 21 who will make no personal effort to get themselves on the register, and, as a large proportion of these potential voters live with parents or otherwise in houses not their own, they are even less likely to be caught and registered automatically than young men, who are still more conspicuous than girls as citizens, says one manly authority.

Canvassing is an, outworn method nowadays for getting votes. Literature will be frely distributed in the general campaign, and meetings at which women speakers will play a great part will be relied on more than houso-to'house visiting. And meetings through the agency of loud-speakers are infinitely more effective than they used to be.

Women, in point of fact, are to-day neither regarded as, nor take themselves to be, inferior animals. Their interest in affairs is just as wide—or as narrow—as is men's. At Geneva, for example, there are now assembled some of the best minds among women. They play their part in the League of Nations affairs, where every nation has its women representatives, not, it is true, as full delegates, but that will come.

One of the best things to be recorded about political feminists is their determination to hear all parties. Thus, at the summer school held in St. Hilda's, one of the less-known women's colleges in Oxford, the speakers were , drawn from all political schools. Thus Miss Marjorie Maxse, whose name smacks of everything diehard, Mr. Walter Layton. a leading Liberal, and Mr. Pethick Lawrence, a Labour M.P., discussed local governing problems in relation to' the new Tory proposals. Discussions on the work of women magistrates, and international affairs, were equally discussed from every political standpoint. So the assembled women do in truth hear all sides.

One of the speakers at this same school was Mrs. Blanco White (Amber Reeves), daughter of Mr. Pember Reeves. Mrs. White was one of the founders of the so-called Fabian nursery, and, like both her parents, wields a powerful pen. Her address is worth more than brief notice, since it deals with that most vexed of modern problems—women in industry.

The Factory Girl. "The ordinary woman's life in industry," Bhe said, "that was, in factories , and workshops, was exceedingly short. Employers gave it as three or four years, but she thought that was rather , too low an estimate. "The average girl passing through the factories is 14 to 23. They are : going through this experience during the most impressionable period of their lives, when our own daughters are being carefully trained and looked after to prepare them to be useful citizens. "If you watch these girls coming out of the factories, you see what look like children, for almost without exception they are short, particularly in the leg, i with pretty, bright little faces, invari- • ably spoiled by some physical defect, 9uch as adenoids. They are smartly i dressed in cheap clothes, and have far ; too much paint and powder on their i faces for such infants. ■ "They are engaged all day in light, i healthy, and not unpleasant monotonous work, requiring no thought, initiative or skill, given to them because no man would take it because monotony sooner or later turns him into a Communist. It has only the effect of deadening a girl and making her stupid. At the end of the day's work their minds turn to their great interest in life, clothes and boys. "When I use the word 'boys' I do not mean men, but those elusive characters running about by herd instinct who are never there when they are wanted, fickle, and in their hearts caring more for motor-cycles than girls. £ The boys lead a far more varied life tt «n the girls, and so have more food! for thought. The girls' minds get deadened at their work, and if their special boys go off preferring a football match to their company the 15 or 16-year-old children go home and break their hearts. It is a tragic problem, .which must be tackled." ... f Mrs. Blanco White blamed employers to a large extent for tinat state of affairs

Women Aviators,

And if, as Mrs. Blanco White puts it, our national development is in one direction making young women take to dull monotonous means of livelihood, in another it appears to be pushing them to another extreme. Even in the air, where women have most largely taken the role so happily phrased by the French as "assisting" in what is going on, some there are who take the most daring part, and to-day we have to record the first case of a woman pilot's crash in England. Miss Wellby, whose parents live in Weybridge, was only 21, but for some time past she has taken up flying and learned at the Henderson Flying School. Brooklands, where she has attended for a considerable time. She had made a few solo flights before to-day, and had managed particularlv well when alone in the air. To-day she went up in the usual way and was about half a mile from the school when the accident happened. Miss Wellby was flying low at the time and got into a spin. "She shot down like a stone," said a witness of the affair, and crashed between the Brooklands motor track and the Southern Railway line, which runs along the track at this spot. A number of platelayers working near ran to her assistance, but she was dead when they arrived. She must have been killed instantly. "Miss Wellby had been an apt pupil," said an official at the Flvmg School, "and in the air was always very cool. Flying was a passion with ner bhe took her tuition here most seriously and made rapid progress. In fact, she was rapidly becoming a skilled pilot." The married woman teacher achieved a notable triumph this week in the dispute between the Leigh (Lanes.) Educational authorities and school teachers when three supplementary teacher/, employed at non-provided schools, were told that their notices had been withdrawn. Mrs. Doris Bent, a non-certificaW teacher, whom the educational anthorities refused to recognise, because she had failed to resign upon marriage, is to be paid the salary withheld from her