WOMEN BREADWINNERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 260, 2 November 1935, Page 8

WOMEN BREADWINNERS.

DISRUPTING SOCIAL SYSTEM. (To the Editor.) No longer need the tired city worker worry about having to deliver up his seat in the tram, to a be-parcelled housewife returning to he t suburban kitchen after a day at the picture and around the shop windows. Instead he has the pleasure of choosing, from among a host of fascinating "young things" of less than twenty-five, who shall occupy his place when he stands. All of which means just this: Are there more young women workers in the cities to-day than men? If so, is it because they are more efficient, more attractive to customers and clients, or because they cost less? A girl takes a post knowing that she is there only until such time as her roving eye can settle on a suitable partner for marriage. It follows then, that comparatively few women in work in shops or offices are breadwinners for families. Every job that could be filled by a man and is filled by woman is a potential cure for unemployment and a cause of prosperity. A man's salary necessarily is spent-to keep his family, whereas the average young woman's, although it may be less, is saved whenever possible for "the great day." It is to me tie first wonder of the world why the brains of our social structure, paraded at this happy voting season before all and sundry in the most favourable light, have not yet grasped the simple fact that to cure unemployment its cause must be removed. By appealing to firms, and seeing that they respond to the appeal, the authorities could strike at the root of one of the strongest factors in unemployment. Abolition of the sales tax would be a small price for the Government to pay industry for such a move. The old prosperity era of far-distant 1925-28' with its money and jobs freely circulating, with ite women all bent on having a "good time" rather than serious morning-to-ni»ht office routine for a half-wage, would return. To-day it sounds fantastic to suggest that women should have a good time; but be it remembered that a nation which forgets how to play in its leisure moments becomes a dull, uninteresting machine. If women must devote their energies to serious tasks outsidethe home, why do they not take up politics! Apart from the joke-feasts a women's Parliament would provide cartoonists and harassed husbands, it would be aimost certain to pass humane social legislation, and, in the manner of the upbringing of housewives, to handle its Treasury superbly. Now, where are our young women candidates for .Parliament? ERNEST BYSSE.