AMONG OURSELVES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 117, 20 May 1931, Page 12

AMONG OURSELVES.

(By CONSTANCE CLYDE.) AMERICA'S FACTORY GIRLS. No less than the women of England and of our own New Zealand, the organised women of America are studying the doleful subject of unemployed women. They have computed that if the actual wealth of the United States, as it now exists, were divided equally among the people, families would each receive each year what in our money is about six hundred pounds, a considerable sum when we remember how much more than this could easily be made, even without real effort, if production were not so frequently held up by lack of purchasing power. Melancholy is their discovery of so many factory occupations for women in which, even with full work, there is never true subsistence level. For each State they have carefully compiled what is such subsistence level. As in so many other countries, work to do with clothes, hosiery and knitted goods is most liable to sweating, while those engaged in electrical, metal, or engineering factories earn frequently above the meridian point, as it is called. As we know, the "speeding up" ideals of industrial America make it impossible for any but skilful and very alert women to gain even inferior positions.

JAPANESE WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. There is hope that the women of Japan may be given the local franchise, as a bill to this effect has been passed .by their House of Representatives, and may presently receive the consent of the Upper House. From this step in advance, it will be easy to move again, and claim the general franchise. When the women are really citizens, will they take any steps to remove the Yoshiwara, the little city within each big city, Avherein the unfortunates are immured, sometimes sent there as children to be "trained" in their profession. The system, in its rigidity, has existed for centuries. It is nothing but legalised slavery, since the girl, when she enters, must at once sign a bond which make 3 her a debtor to the Yoshiwara authorities. No magistrate would take her part if she appealed against this bond, and from her earning, or rather allowance, it is seldom possible, unless she is classed "first grade," ever to buy her way out. In old age she is neglected, and often denied medical assistance. Nevertheless, the inmates may gain credit of a kind, as is shown in one Yoshiwara, wherein there is a memorial to those who perished in a great earthquake fire of some years ago. The Japanese outlook in moral matters is different from ours, and it is said that if a girl has thus sold herself from ethical motives, such as to help in the education of a brother, she will receive respectable offers of marriage should she be purchased out.

THE BIRTH CONTROL MOVEMENT. A great impetus to the birth control movement was given when the Federal Churches of Christ in America, after a very long and anxious debate, gave a certain approval to the ideal sponsored in our times by Marie Stopes, though by no means, unknown in ancient Rome and Greece. The council which thus gave its decision represented between 21,000,000 and 22,000,000 persons. The names of many women are given, mostly mission workers, and the heads of feminist organisations, and also, at least, one woman of the pulpit. Psychologists and medical men and women had given the subject careful study. The problem of course is one not only of limitation, but often of the "proper spacing of the family," and there is some recognition of this problem as one due largely to our economic system, which is now so severe on the large family. On the other hand, there is no doubt that the ideal, if it ever becomes part of our life, will mean a certain unjust contempt of those who "keep the cradle full," and, later, fall on hard times. From a rather unwholesome admiration of the large family of Victorian days we may go to the other extreme of overmuch censure, not realising that in giving women the right to modify their motherhood, we must not enforce such an ideal upon them. It has been computed that each married couple would need to have three children to keep the population even stationary, and with so many doing less than this, the occasional quite large family would ' seem to be racially necessary;