TO THE OLD MAIDS

Evening Star, Issue 20372, 2 January 1930, Page 12

TO THE OLD MAIDS

"The world lias no more precious possession than its spinsters, and any diminution in their number would bo a step backward.” The above challenging statement was made by Mr It B. Kerr (London) at the International Congress of the World League for Sexual Reform at "Wigmoro Hall, London, W. At presdnt, he said, more than 40 per cent, of women over thirty had never been married. This was largely due to the fact that great numbers of men did not. marry. Nearly a quarter of the men of thirty-five in this country were still unmarried. Even this did not at all represent the amount of spinsterhood among the most influential social classes.

“BACKBONE” OF GOOD CAUSES. In the unskilled labouring classes most women married; among the most educated women the majority never married. Moreover,_ the age of marriage had been getting later for centuries.

me growth of spinsterhood had been concurrent with the greatest growth of humanity the world Tmd ever kniwn, continued Mr Kerr.

During last century numberless societies had sprung up for humane objects of every kind to prevent cruelty to animals, to abolish slavery and child labour, to ameliorate the criminal law, to promote international peace, and to sweep away slums. Spinsters had been the backbone of all these movements. The influence of spinsters bad for the first time lifted mankind above the narrow confines of the family, and had released for the benefit of the oppressed classes, distant countries, alien races, and other animals than man an immense fellow-sympathy which in the past would have been expended entirely on the house. Professor J. C. Flugel (London), in a paper on ‘Sex Differences in Dress,’ said that at the ordinary social function the men wore dresses in a dull uniformity of black and white, “the very embodiment of life’s prose.” But if there was a lack of romance there was also absent the envy, the jealousy, the petty triumphs, defeats, and spitofulness engendered by details of women’s clothes. One woman could humiliate another to ' the point of lasting bitterness by being, more effectively dressed. “ Men’s costume needs rescuing from the abject slavery to convention, into which it has fallen,” concluded Professor Flugel. “Women’s costumes need, above all things, a severe purging from the elements of plutocratic snobbery, a snobbery which lays more stress on costliness., quantity, and novelty than on suitability or beauty, and in consequence fosters extravagance and jealousy.”