AMONG OURSELVES.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 41, 18 February 1929, Page 11

AMONG OURSELVES.

A WEEKLY BUDGET

(By CONSTANCE CLYDE.)

•AMERICA'S ONLY SAINT."

"The only saint, that America has produced." was a phrase once used of Jane Adams, so great a force in the feminist world, owing to her life-long humanitarian work and the years which she pave later to the cause of pacificism ami international peace. '"Hull House —that is Jane Adams." is another phrase—this establishment being the world-famous sociological centre in Chicago, which is something more than a largo settlement place, though it began that way. Born in a rich family. Jane Adams, even in her youth, was seized with the desire to ameliorate the lot of the poor. She spoke of what she knew, for she visited the slums of London, as well as of her own country, ami she gave up tiie idea of a medical career in order to do her work in an even larger way. "Why do people live in such horrid little houses';"

she asked her father, when, at the age of seven, she happened to visit among mill people. When he explained matters somewhat to her. she replied: "I, of course, shall live in a big house, but it will not lie among other big houses, hut among poor ones." This ambition was actually fulfilled by the erection of Hull House, after five years of what she called ''imprisonment in the snare of preparation." Her great success in social regeneration was due to her judicial powers, and to her gift of equanimity. It is told that once finding a burglar in her room, making toward the window as he saw him-elf observed, she called out advising him to go by the door and not risk an accident to himself! This advice he sensiblv obeved.

WOMEN'S JUDGING CAPACITY,, The personnel of our new board for t lie detection of mental defectives is now known, ami we must be pleased to notice two women on it. It is often said that women go to extremes, but in the matter of eugenics, real or so-called, they are less inclined to be fanatical than men. In a recent "Sydney Bulletin" a man writer draws attention to the number of mental defectives already segregated in one district of Victoria, and to the numbers, probably five times more, who are at large. Arguments that have been confuted again ami again he brings forward to support his jdea for the drastic laws passed in California in 1908; he does not mention that all the countries except one that have passed such laws have repealed them since. Women, judging by their own special magazines devoted t<> serious subjects, keep an open mind on this subject. They know howlaws originally passed against both sexes have been operated only against one. and that, similarly, legislation which seems to include all classes may be a weapon only against the poor and friendless.

FRENCH FEMINISM. Says the Duchess d'Uzes, the veteran French suffragist: "The women of France have a new hope of winning the ballot at a result of the recent reshuffling of Ministerial posts. Hitherto it has been the Senate rather than the Chamber which has blocked suffrage reform, but no Prime Minister has ever yet mad'.' woman's suffrage a matter of confidence on which his government would be willing to stand or fall." She did not, she said, approve of militancy or the street demonstrations which were successful in England—leaning rather to a tax resistance campaign as a last desperate resort to be held in readiness. "If we do not obtain satisfaction."' she said, "it is possible that a campaign to refuse to pay taxes will be undertaken. ]f Frenchwomen suddenly cease contributing financial aid to the Government, perhaps their voice will be heeded." THE MINER'S WIFE. In a very frank article in the "Nineteenth Century*' (Mrs. L. D. Murray speaks of the miners' houses, where now is great distress, and her observations on the sanitation and other matters prove a state of things as in some savage country. Even in prosperous times the wife's lot is one of toil, though to this she never objects. Sometimes her husband has to leave at four in the morning. She must be up to prepare his breakfast, and then later there are her lodgers and other work to consider, until her husband returns at twelve. He then presumably may rest for a while, but she has her children to make her daj' a long one. The harmful physical effects of the strike are on the mother, but the moral results are affecting the younger men, who are bitter as regards the way the older people of the world have spoilt things. Mrs. Murray herself interviewed these people—"gaunt hens scratched round one door. "What have you done with vour canary?" she asked. "Killed it"—and this fate befell also the dogs. The pride ot the miner's wife is such that she will ! not permit even a neighbour to enter her denuded home, even though that neighbour is similarly despoiled" The writer asks no help from the colonies, however. She seems to see clearly that England can and ought to set right its own industrial wrongs. Curoius is it, however, to read in the "Women's Leader" of December 14 the Prime Minister's statement that the '-Government were watching the situation with anxiety and every sympathy, but they are not satisfied" at present that the situation is beyond what can be done through the ordinary channels, supplemented by the unemployed insurance fund, and by the Poor Law and other authorities." The woman observer, however, shows how inadequate are such sources of relief.