MAINLY FOR WOMEN

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 January 1929, Page 3

MAINLY FOR WOMEN

ITEMS OF, INTEREST

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GOOD MANNERS. INTERESTING COMPARISONS. It is a curious thing, and rather interesting, that given an assemblage of equal social standing selected at random, quite different standards of good manners will be found. What ohe set condemns as vulgar, another will do with complete self-satisfaction. What is the determining factor? (asks Lady Theodora Davidson in the London “Daily Mail”). In many cases nationality. Certain it is that a scrutiny of the gue'sts’in a fashionable restaurant will enable one to determine fairly accurately the portion of the civilised globe whence they come. In Rome one day I watched with some curiosity the movements of a charming woman who sat at the table nearest me. She was well dressed; her manner to the waiter was courteous. I could not hear what language she spoke, but the handbook at her side revealed that it must he the same as my own.

She cut up her food in the ordinary way, but laid down her knife, transferred the fork to her right hand, and raised it to her mouth. It was not till I went to America the following year that I discovered that it is thought extremely vulgar there to eat with the left hand.

Again, the French will ladle soup into their mouths from the top of the spoon held in front of the lips—we look askance at such manners and sip from the side.

We can all manage spaghetti with propriety —when it is stiffened with parmesan and tomato. But try it cooked simply in butter or oil. In Italy, I have seen princes prod a fork into a huge mess of it and with a few quick turns heap up a parcel that one would have thought no mouth could contain. They would then sit back and smilingly watch my unavailing efforts to twine two or three helpless worms round mine.

Tliere are three or four methods of placing the spoon and fork on the plate at the end of a course, each approved by different schools. Travelling farther afield or entertaining Eastern guests at home, we must nerve ourselves to listen to the species of throat sounds for which we punish our small children. They betoken a complimentary gratitude. The idea of putting one’s fingers into the dish and tearing the meat from the joint is repulsive until one has seen it dene. But the extraordinary tenderness of a young lamb that is to be treated thus, the dignity of the movement, the immediate attention of a servant for each guest with rose water in precious receptacles, make it all proper and natural. Taking for granted, therefore, that each and all of the diners abovementioned are of the best social caste and are. acting up to the code of manners in which they have been trained, the moral to be drawn from the very different results probably is that everything is right if viewed from the right standpoint.

THE NEED FOR POLICEWOMEN. Miss Daisy R. Curtis, officer in charge of the women police at Port Pirie, South Australia, is an interesting visitor to Auckland just now. Recently, she was the guest of Dr Buckley Turkington at the Auckland Y.W.C.A. buildings, when members of the executive of the Auckland branch of the National Council of Women, met Miss Curtis, and learned something of the duties of policewomen in Australia. Miss Curtis paid a tribute to Brigadier-General Leane, Commissioner of Police in South Australia, who, by his enthusiasm for the women police movement, had helped to make it an established thing there. The success of the work depended very largely on the type of woman who was chosen. A highly-trained and qualified university woman was needed for a woman policeman, while for a police matron tact and human sympathy were the necessary requirements. Miss Curtis referred to the enormous amount of work being done throughout the world by educated women toward building up the peace of the world- University girls and others were doing a wonderful amount of social work, and the world was already benefiting considerably by it.

SLEEP AND BE HEALTHY. A DOCTOR’S ADVICE. Dr Stella Churchill, repeating the saying that a man slept six hours, a woman seven, a child eight, and a fool nine, remarked at the Institute of Hygiene, London, recently, “I am glad to say I am numbered among the fools.” After the age of three human beings did not require daylight sleep, except on Sundays, when the national bad habit of over-eating made them drowsy. The more one ate, more sleep was required. For an avenge person, Dr Churchill advocated between eight and nine hours’ sleep. Growing children should sleep on a hard mattress, and the bed should never be placed against a wall. “One’s judgment is impaired by lack of sleep. Girls have married the wrong man and refused to marry the right one because their judgment has been at fault following sleepless nights. Men go to bed in pyjamas buttoned up to their neck, and they are not so healthy for it. Women, who wear lighter night attire, derive d benefit from it.

“People should not be wakened from sleep,” said Dr Churchill. “We are still suffering from the mid-Victorian idea that there is something shameful about being asleep, as exemplified in the hymn about the sluggard who is disinclined to wake up. I think an association for the abolition of breakfast bells in boarding houses should be formed. The effect of being awakened rudely is to jar the nervous system and leave the person thus weakened unfit to face the troubles of the day.”

KITCHENS OF EMPIRE. ENGLISH GIRL’S VENTURE. The desire to discover for herself whether the conditions for domestic workers were as they are painted, prompted Miss Mary Luty, an English girl, to spend three and a-half years in the kitchens of the Empire—mainly those of Canada, New Zfealand and Australia. In an interesting article in the Sydney “Sun” Miss Luty tells of her experiences and conclusions. It was in January, 1925, that she started on her voyage of discovery and in the three and a-half years of her stay in the Dominions, she sampled every branch of housework in the city and backblocks. In Montreal she worked as cook, but her duties also were intended to be those of housemaid, parlourmaid, lady’s maid, to be, in short, a cook-general. And Miss Luty humorously offers the conclusion that there is nothing under heaven so general as a cook general. She stayed seven weeks in this job of maid-of-all work. Followed a position during harvest time on the prairie; cooking and helping on the farm comprised her duties, and the Englishwoman found the days very long, if the weather was good. She cooked for a crew of 16 threshers, lived in a cook car, and did all her work in this cosy caravan. Five dollars a day was the wage. Auckland was the next destination of Miss Luty, and in the capacity of domestic worker she went through the two islands. Now she is in Australia. Miss Luty found that the domestic workers of Canada are, on the whole, better paid than in New Zealand or Australia. Her experiences showed her that the domestic, no matter how educated she might be, is looked down upon as inferior to the office girl, no matter how indifferent or careless a typist the latter might be. She advocated regulation of hours, training centres for girls, where they could qualify for certificates in any branch of housework, recognised uniform, and the abolition of the living-in system. The latter she describes as one of the slowly-dying remnants of feudalism. While a person lives in the place where he or she works, even if leisure time is granted, the atmosphere is the same. Miss Luty maintains that it is just as necessary for a domestic worker to get away from the scene of her duties at the end of the day, as it is for the office girl. The insistence of proper training, the passing of an efficiency test, with a recognised uniform to work in, would, she considers, help to put domestic workers on a status with other workers, and tend to abolish the terrible snobbery that exists, not only so far as mistress and maid are concerned, but among working girls themselves. What hurts the domestic emigrant from overseas is that snobbery exists in the colonies equal to anything they have ever met in real “blue-blooded” families of the Old Country. Miss Luty has found New Zealanders and Australians, on the whole, “very agreeable, hospitable, and kindly.”

A WOMAN COUNCILLOR. Fulham Municipal Council in London has now a woman council member who is but 21 years of age. Her name is Gladys Waldron, and her father is this year Mayoi’ of Fulham. She is described by a recent interviewer as “very pretty, bright-eyed and vivacious with a beautiful pink and white complexion, that only an open-air life can give.” She engages in all the sports of youth—swimming, tennis, lacrosse, but more especially she enjoys hunting. She intended through her school career to become a barrister, and grasped every opportunity of debating and speaking; later she gained experience in public speaking, and her proficiency in this regard was one of the reasons why she was asked to stand for the council. She accepted because of her great interest in public life, which always has seemed to her to give exceptional opportunities of working for the benefit of those not so fortunately situated in life. She believes that women should not be excluded from any usefiil career merely because they are women, and is a firm advocate of the principle of equal pay for equal work. Miss Waldron’s particular interest is in the housing committee of the Fulham Council. She is a piember of the committee but she considers that she has not yet had sufficient experience to come to any definite conclusions as to what should be done in this matter. But she hopes to play her part in securing additional playing space for the children in the more crowded districts of the municipality, where she describes as pitiful the conditions in tfre sjtre&ti? on halfholidays/