THE AUSTRALIAN MAN.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 52, 25 November 1907, Page 3

THE AUSTRALIAN MAN.

It is.frequently said.hero (writes our special correspondent in Melbourne) that tho Women's Exhibition would bo a groater success if there were nioro things that appealed to men. In a sense that is true, for there is a most amazing quantity of uninteresting needlework; but there are also a very large numbor of exhibits which ought to appeal to men. Tho fact that they elon't is the fault of tho men, not of tho exhibits. Many of tho pictures, portieres, and- screens, and a> great doal of the woodcarving is art of tho purest and truest. A man like William Morris would have revelled in it; but in tho average Australian man there is little or nothing of the spirit of William Morris. Indced.Australia seems to bo on tho highroad to a sociological development such as wo sco in America, where for ono man interested in Art and Literature and all that makes life best and most worth living, there aro half-a-dozen women to bo found. Here there is so much worship of tho Golden Calf that tho men toil long and late at their offices and warehouses quito content, apparently, to miss the dcepor meaning of life so long only as they can mako money—mako it easily if possible, but make it. Of courso, it is, in one ,, sense, this vory making of money which enables the women to have) tho leisure and tho means for developing their tastes in the arts and crafts; but that does not seem to wholly account for the differenco between tho sexes in tho Australian towns. Tho average Australian townswoman strikes tho observer as being better developed and more refinod, physically as well as mentally, tljan the average Australian townsman. Ovct and over again on going down tho streets ono observes a tall, wellmade and rofined woman walking side by side with'a man who certainly has no claim to these adjectives. The Australian cities seem to be developing a great many ladies, but very fcvfi gentlemen. \