EDUCATED WOMEN AS COLONISTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 221, 18 September 1930, Page 13

EDUCATED WOMEN AS COLONISTS.

Some years ago we had advocacy of educated women as migrants for the new lands, but in this case the ideal was a professional career, while the advantage to the colony was considered from the cultural point of view. Judith Ann Silburn, who claims to know the overseas, now speaks for the educated woman, not merely for professions in the colonies, but for life on the- land. Men in new lands hate the country, she believes, because there are no women there, or, at least, too few women. Therefore, they make for the towns, and refuse to live rurally. I am afraid that this idea has more romance in it than reality. If the land worker goes to the cities for feminine society, it is because the'woman in the country has no leisure, ahd if more women came they also would b& absorbed into the ever active life in which there is small time for amusement. However, the writer has practical ideas also, and mentions ...beekeeping, horticulture and poultry-fanning as occupations, in which the Englishwoman might be helpful to herself and to her adopted country. Many such superior women have "found , . , themselves in this New Zealand of ours, but, as someone lias said of them, "whatever they come out to do, they find themselves doing something else—and by adaptability and concentration, two qualities not easily found in; the same individual,, making success of it."

THE BIRTH CONTROL QUESTION. Far more than with us does the question of population interest the Homelanders,, and every feminist magazine has something to say on the subject. There is much that isMronically true in Sir Leo Chiozza Money's statement that if the "better, classes of society/ , 'as they cat I themselves, aro really concerned because the unfit propagate, then they show no patriotism by limiting their own families as much as they do. As a matter of fact, this writer considers that the limitation is now being practised by the "lower orders," so that the only result is that several countries, such as France, Germany, and even England, are slowly dying out. If the intelligentsia really consider themselves the salt of the earth, why do they not become parents of small intelligentsia to a greater extent than is the Case? There are many now beginning to wonder, however, whether it is truo that the "lower orders" are the cause of degeneracy. Considering their vastly greater numbers, it might well be shown that they produce fewer of the abnormal —indeed, that but for them the normal would not continue so steadily as it does. Given a.better environment, as sometimes even without this, the' strong and useful. citizen, as sometimes- the genius, would come from the working home. ' . „ . :

SOME AUSTRALIAN WOMEN. Literary talent seems pronounced among the women of Australia) for the Australian Literary Society ot ' Melbourne' not only awarded first prize: to ; a -woman, hut placed two women competitors as second and third. The work desired was a one act play dealing with Australian life, a thenij in which the woman may easily have less widespread knowledge . than the" man. Another noted .Australian woman in Miss l'\ M. Ayres, who has been spending a holiday in her native city Adelaide, before returning to her duties in the disturbed land of India. For 20 years she has been matron of the Government Victoria Hospital in Madras, an establishment which is staffed entirely by women. Many of these are native doctors Who possess high qualifications. They attend on an average 1700 cases every year. Recuperating now in Melbourne is Mrs: Oliver Burgess, who for 30 years has been doing medical mission work in China.- Her husband, Dr. Burgess, was one of. the founders of the China Inland Mission. With him she was once held.,captive by bandits fir three moriths. " : She herself has travelled almost to the borders of Tibet.