Feilding Star, Oroua and Kiwitea Counties' Gazette. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1914. For Women must Weep and Sow and Reap.

Feilding Star, Volume XI, Issue 2465, 6 October 1914, Page 2

Feilding Star, Oroua and Kiwitea Counties' Gazette. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1914. For Women must Weep and Sow and Reap.

Recent developments in Germany, unconsciously, of course, have tended to help that country recuperate all the more rapidly from the decimation of its men at the war. It has always been a surprise to tho Now Zealander touring Europe to sec so many women and girls toiling in the fielcls in agricultural districts. It was so in Maoriland, but not many of us remember those days. In Germany there is a vaster army of womenfolk who toil,daily in the fields than of men who are now at the war. And in recent years these women workers have been organising into associations, especially in the regions of East Prussia that havo been overrun by the Russians and in Schleswig-Hol-stein. One of these growing combinations is known as the Prussian Federation of Farm Women's Associations. Their aim more especially is to instruct their members in domestic economy, to engage' in the sale of domestic rural products, and to provide, by meanG of the establishment of shops iv cities, good and fresh food supplier for families in urban centres —in fact, to equalise the advantages of city and country, which differences havo been as great in Germany as in New Zealand. Those- institutions aro widely diffused; chiefly in East Prussia, where there wero (beforo tho war) moro than thirty, with a turn over, in 1911, of 722,000 marks, and in 1912 (the latest figures available) of 865.000 marks.- The women's associations in tho four provinces of East Prussia, West Prussia, Pomorania, and Schloswig-Holstein roceutly formed themselves into provincial federation-;, and in other provinces they wero soon to take similar steps. In February last, in Berlin, a conference was held under the auspices of tho Prussian Royal College of Rural Economy, at which there wore present representatives of the four provincial federated societies, and of those farm woman's societies in which there were not yet federations, also delegates from the Chambers of Agriculture concerned. It was decided to establish a Prussian Federation of Farm Women's Association. The Federation proposed to form a central institution for the work of the provincial federations among the Agricultural Housewives' Associations, and to act as thoir representative, especially in regard to courses for the completion of the education of housewives in domestic matters, courses oi domestic economy for girls, increase in profits from domestic economy and facilitation of sales of produce, the supply of fresh food to families in the cities, and the encouragement of fruit-grow-ing and horticulture and bee and poultry keeping on scientific principles, as well as other branches of domestic economy. The policy also included a struggle against the-exo-dus of women from the country to cities, which had become as acute in Prussia as iv New South Wales. The German solution of this problem was the maintenance of family life anion oagricultural labourers by tlio creation of profitable household industries, tho provision of lucrative, independent, agreeable work for women indoors, or in the cultivation of vegetables and a provision that women agricultural labourers might have opportunities of sharing in the advantage of the Farm Women's Associations. An excellent policy and prolamine, but the whole scheme is nor upset by a struggle for very existence caused by the insanity of tho war lords of Germany.