WANTED, FIFTY-FOUR THOUSAND WOMEN.

Evening Post, Volume LXXI, Issue 146, 21 June 1906, Page 4

WANTED, FIFTY-FOUR THOUSAND WOMEN.

The conference which was held in London a day or two ago at the instance of Lady Aberdeen, Mrs. James Bryce, and "other educated ladies," and presided over by Sir John Cockburn, exPremier and ex-Agent-General of South Australia, was obviously inspired by the very best of motives ; but the result of the efforts may be the exact opposite of what is intended unless they are very closely scrutinised and very carefully directed. The object of the meeting was "to demonstrate the openings presented in the colonies for educated, trained women fitted to undertake the lighter kinds of agricultural work, fruit preserving and bottling, poultry and bee keeping, and dairying, or as experts in domestic work." So far as this colony is concerned, the last item in the list comes nearest to filling a real want, though its phrasing is of a kind to excite suspicion. Domestic servants are badly needed here beyond a doubt, but for an educated class for whom the duties have to be disguised as those of experts in domestic work" the openings are not so obvious, and domestic servants of tho working typo seem also to be in great request in the Mother Country. But as for the "lighter kinds of agricultural work," poultry-keeping, dairying etc., a conscientious man at all familiar with the facts would surely hesitate a long time before issuing to educated women familiar Only with the conditions of the Old Land invitations to come and rough it here without friends, experience, or capital. Tho realities of life on a dairy farm in this colony accord very ill with the Arcadian Visions of the milkmaid's happy lot ■winch the fancy may easily conjure up at a distance, and somebody should sco that the realities are explained to those to whom tho 'conference ' has issued a kind of general invitation, before action has been taken and cruel disappointment incurred. Mr. W. J. Napier, who formerly represented the city of Auckland in the House of Representatives,, has provided a statistical basis for the hopes of the conference by declaring that "fifty-four thousand women were needed *in New Zealand, _ where special facilities were given associated groups of ladiea qualified to engage in fruit-growing." Mr. Napier's figures evidently represented the difference between the male and the female population of the colony, but he omitted to tell his hearera that four hundred of the educated women to whom th» appeal was made would be needed to go to the Cook Islands to make good their share in the shortage of our female population, and three thousand would have to join the 'Maoris to fill up the same deficiency there, while the alarming shortage in our nurseries would require about seven thousand of these educated immigrants to be babies. It is, of course, a perfect farce to use statistics in this way, and it is equally delusive to speak of the " special facilities given to associated_ groups of ladies qualified to engage in fruit-growing '/ us though, they held out a practical chanco ,for fiftyfour thousand women, or any other appreciable number, from the Old Country. We notioo that even the AgentGeneral for Queensland spoko of tho profitable openings afforded, presumably for women, by fruit-growing in his State-; and we regret that the High Commissioner of this colony was not present to give the meeting a little common-sense that would put tilings in their true bearing from a practical standpoint. Before 'Mr. Napier succeeds in persuading a posse of English philanthropists to charter a flotilla for* the purpose of dumping fifty-four thousand eduoated English women' on our shores in order to grow fruit, milk cows, and raise poultry, the Government had better instruct ■Mr. Reeves to tell tho British public what chanoes of success this most engaging project would really have.