"THE NATION'S HOUSE WIFE"

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 36, 11 August 1923, Page 18

"THE NATION'S HOUSE WIFE"

Mr. Stanley Baldwin has been paying compliments to the housewives of tha nation—or, rather, to the women unionists among them, says the " Sunday Pictorial." Every woman, he has told them, is a Chancellor of the Exchequer and every Chancellor . is " the housewife of the nation.'" Perhaps, however, women, who are acute political critics, will note that these remarks.are not often applied. If they were, the thought of the average home and ils daily burdens would rule the minds of bureaucrats. 1 They would always consider, before one of their bold adventures in public finance, how exactly it would be likely to react upon the happiness of innumerable families. On the contrary, it is notorious that the standards applied to national expenditure bear no relation whatever to those devised for the prudent working of a private business or a family budget. Hence the woes of so many- women who are not Chancellors. Some of them—a good many—have votes, however. And therefore our truly up-to-date Chancellor did well to describe himself as a " housewife." It is at least a compliment to feminine .prudence in domestic finance, from which even a bureaucrat might learn much.