MAINLY FOR WOMEN

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 July 1931, Page 7

MAINLY FOR WOMEN

ITEMS OF INTEREST

(Notes by

Marjorie)

WOMEN IN INDUSTRY. British women engineers arc making their name famous the world over. Recently a large firm of electricians in Athens decided to have one ol the women members of the staff trained for showroom purposes. Miss Caroline Haslett, of the Women’s Engineers’ Association of Great B: itain, was approached and she offered to take over the instruction of the student. The young Greek girl was accordingly sent to London for six weeks’ intensive training under Miss Haslett, and returned to Athens full of enthusiasm for her new job. There are many women actively engaged in aviation in America. Twyla J. Kelley is managing her own airpert and aviation school at Long Beach, California, having started four years ago with one ’plane and a rented landing field. Another woman, Maigaret Perry, manages ap airport and training school at Culver City, California, and Crystal Mowry, of Colorado, earned the fees of he’pilot’s course by parachute jumping. Her ambition is to secure a position with an aeroplane manufacturing company as a demonstrator of ’planes. Women played an important part in the census which was carried out in England and Wales lust April. Of Ike 10,000 people employed, more than half were women and girls. Two hundred girls fresh from school, who worked the punching machines, were chosen because experience bad proved that at that age they were the most efficient and accurate people to bo found for the work. There were many more women among the coding staff and in the field there were a large number of women enumerators.

GIFTED MOTHERS. INHERITANCE OF TALENT

Mr Francis Gallon, the author of “Hereditary Genius,” says: “It is commonly asserted that where great power of intellect seems to have been inherited, it has descended through the mother’s side. My own inquiries have led me to diametrically opposite conclusion. I find that talent is transmitted by inheritance in a very remarkable degree, and that the mother lias by no means the monopoly of its transmission. The qualities ot each individual are due to the combined influence of his two parents, and the remarkable qualities of the one may have been neutralised in the offspring of the other. Hence, it is an open question, foi who can say how much of a great man’s greatness is due to his natural abilities with which he was born, and how much is due to the force of example, to family tradition, to education, to his own application, and the concurrence of circumstances? It is in no man’s power to tell, nor in any scientist’s power to ascertain. It is true that in the great majority of known cases eminent men have had gifted mothers —as in the case of Bacon, Buffon, Condorcet, Cuvier, D’Alembert, Forbes, Gregory, and Watt. Both Brodie and Jussieu had remarkable grandmothers. The eminent relations of Newton were connected with him by female links. St biller's mother was passionately fond of music and poetty, and Goethe says that ho derived the faculty of representing “all that the imagination can conceive, with energy, and vivacity from her.” Lord Erskine’s mother was a woman of superior intellect. The mother of Sir Walter Scott was a. woman of marked talent while his father was rather dull! Napoleon’s father was a man of no peculiar mind, but his mother was distinguishid for her understanding. Lord Mmnington, the father of the Wellesleys, was an excellent musician and no more, but his wife was remarkable for iter intellectual superiority. These facts of great men owing their greatness more to the mother may be explained by her greater influence in forming the mind, in moulding the < baracter, in stimulating and directing the exercise of her son’s faculties, rather than that of the father. It is ;:s an educator in the largest sense that the mother forms her sou’s ehu 1 - acter and influences bis destiny. It is her womanly instincts, affection and care and vigilance, her ready sympathy, her love, her tenderness, and power to inspire a. noble ambition and kindle higlt and genetous aspirations in the breast of her son, that do the work.

THE LATEST COLOUR CATERPILLAR GREEN The fashionable colour for decoration at the moment is caterpillar green generally combined with something silvery, whether it. be metal or mirror. Furniture is painted in this colour with very good effect, and it wrms an excellent background for little posies of different coloured flowers, very much conventionalised. The colour is also curried into materials. Dressing tables, are being made in kidney shape with a caterpillar-green top and petticoated with a chintz which picks up the green. A further use for the colour is seen in paint. Panelled rooms are painted green, and so also are plain walls. Sometimes it forms a background for large designs such as are seen in Chinese wallpapers or for decorative groups of birds or flowers. A very few splashes of colour on the green throw it up to great advantage. Some rooms have white walls with green paint and a green frieze. White rooms have curtains of the pale green, generally heavily lined. The mirror is an, important part of the colour scheme, because it tones so well with it. Sometimes a frameless mirror is let into the walls to make a break in the green and also to make the room Ibok larger. Silver balls are used in rooms of this kind, and the chromed metal furniture of course looks particularly well in it. A touch of warmth is sometimes introduced. The metal chairs have natural-coloured seats and backs. Sometimes the walls are of plain wood in a warm yellowish tinge. Mirror is let. into them to give the silver appearance, and the curtains and upholstery are of the caterpilar green. While this makes an ideal summer room, it also never looks cold in winter weather.

THE BLACK CAT. “If a black cat crosses your path good luck will be yours.” If they have any belief in this popular superstition tho future must look rosy to a young couple who were married at Marterton on a Saturday night re cently. Not only did a black cat cross their path, but it preceded tho bride up the aisle of the church. Not content with this, it stayed with them at the altar and when the couple was about to kneel down the animal was icelining on the cushion, and had first to be iemoved. As the wedding party left the church the cat joined in the procession, stalking proudly with tail in air alongside the bridal couple.

CARE OF THE SEWING MACHINE

A sewing machine needs a good clean occasionally to free it from any dust that may have got in during the winter. Remove the needle, then examine the shuttle amt clean it. Oiling a machine needs to be done very lightly, a few drops of oil being sufficient. Use the machine oil which is sold for the puipose, as vegetable <jil only clogs the working. Turn the machine back so that the internal fittings are seen,-and remove any superfluous oil. But back and work slowly and carefully for a. minute t or two to see that all is running smoothly. Replace the needle and the shuttle. Tho sewing should be smooth and even; if not and the thread breaks, the fault is with the setting of the needle, or it may be you have not given the shuttle the necessary drop of oil.

Go over the wooden part with furnituio polish, and brighten the metal parts with just a touch of metal r- iish. It. will lool< like new and repay your work. Then, with the assurance id’ it biing perfectly clean and reliable, the home dressmaker may stmt, her work. When not in uro, the. cover should be on and locked to prevent, dust gelling in. MORNING DRESS 130 YEARS AGO. “The Lady's Magazine” .’lor ,1799 thus described an up-to-date dress in a. forecast of “Female. Fashions at the end of the LSth century":

“Gown id' pink muslin plain sleeve'-. 10r.es on the shoulders, a single plait round the neck, coming to a point in front; full mm iin braces, fastened in front, with a rosette. and girdle of the same round the waist, fastened with the same. White heart 1 hat turned up in front (tills sounds familiar) with purple cord and gold buckle; purple feathers and shoes.”