IF I LIVE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 229, 27 September 1930, Page 4 (Supplement)

IF I LIVE.

PEEP INTO THE FUTURE. WHAT I HOPE TO SEE. (By THE RIGHT HONOURABLE MARGARET BONDFIELD, M.P., Miiiister of Labour.) I liopo to see the day when the question of economic equality for the sexes 1 will cease to be a matter of controversy. : We are just entering upon an era in ' which men and women work together, , side by. side, 011 an equal footing. • It is not men alone, however, that arc 1 to blame for the inequality of treatment 1 accorded respectively to male and female . labour. Women have done' their share, ■ unhappily, to preserve the idea that they 1 can be employed more cheaply while doing the same amount of work. They failed to realise what a struggle men have had to establish standards of working conditions. Women have received tower wages than men because they knew little or nothing about wage standards, and took what was offered to them in a competitive market, in ignorance of their labour value. They were ignorant of (he harm they did to themselves and-to men by failing to put up an organised resistance to sweated conditions of employment. Women Must Organise. To-day men and women are better educated to demand a fair price for their work. To-day they must organise, otherwise in every competitive market the workers will be driven to accept -subsistence wages by the stern necessity of hunger. Men have now begun to recognise that unless they help women to organise and to sec to it that they receive the same price for the job they will inflict irretrievable injury upon themselves. I hope I live to see the home made into a real home, a centre of comfort and happiness and health. Undoubtedly a most urgent problem of the moment is the transformation of housewifery from drudgery into an agreeable occupation. For centuries Ave have looked at '•Home" through a veil of sentimentality, and we have brought less common sense to bear upon it than any other matter of national importance. Home is the province, presumably, best understood by women, and it is one more proof of the need of co-operation that the house-planning should be backward and inadequate. Women have been too modest.in their demands in regard to the I requirements of a home; they have been so handicapped that it has not been possible for them to initiate the changes needed. It is only now, when their horizon is expanded by the larger life of citizenship, that their demand is beginning to catch up with scientific possibilities. Housework. Men are apt to take a housewife's work too much for granted. There is 110 reason whv housewifery should not be the most joyous and interesting profession open to women. There is no reason why any "woman should stoop over a bucket; 110 reason why she should wash dishes day after day until she has become more drudge than human being; no reason, either, why she should scrub floors, 011 her hands and knees. Mechanical science can obviate all these evils. I hope I live to see housewifery a dignified and interesting calling, an occupation which any woman should be proud to follow. This is no Utopian dream, no unpractical aspiration of mine. It is a desire that I believe will be realised within my own lifetime. I look for the day, and it is not far distant, when electricity will take the place of hand-labour. We have grown accustomed to the idea of scrapping antiquated plant in factories —wo must learn to scrap obsolete methods in the home. Both are uneconomic. The home must keep pace with the factory. Science in the Home. I hope I live to see the day when the home is accorded as much respectful attention and as much scientific thought as the factory and the office. When this change comes about, and I believe that it will come quickly, Ave shall have made one of the biggest steps to be recorded, in the history of civilisation. The advance of civilisation means, as I see it, not merely mechanical progress but an improvement in our mode of living, greater happiness for the largest possible number of people. It cannot be said to have advanced if Ave leave the most vital institution of all in a benighted condition. Above all I hope I live to see the day Avhen maternity Avelfare has readied a stage of development which ensures the Avoman of scant means the same protection as Avould be given to her richer sisters. Only by such intelligent measures can Ave hope to produce a healthier race. Great Britain has always had plenty of common sense, and so I do not doubt that Avithin a short time, men and women together Avill legislate in such a way as to make the bearing of children as safe for the poor as for the Avell-off. I stress the fact that such measures will be legislated by men and women combining their respective efforts. It is in the blending of opinions that ' we shall discover new truths, or rather 1 that old truths will be newly discovered.

Adequate Leisure. And there is one more thing that I hope I Hve to see —adequate leisure for everybody. We live in a mechanical age, and there is danger that we may come to think upon lines that are too mechanical and too standardised. We want individuality, and individuality cannot be developed without intellectual exercise. Sport, amusement, reading, social contact, observation of Nature, all these things are essential to the development of personality, and without personality, no worker is worth his salt. Ideally a forty-four hour week should be sufficient to get the work of the world done, and it would allow enough leisure for the individual to create for himself a private life, filled with interests, and worth the living. I speak, not as an idealist,' but as a practical person who has had opportunity to sec the immediate developments and improvements, possible, within the . British Empire.— (Anglo-American N.S. Copyright.)