MAINLY FOR WOMEN

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 December 1935, Page 9

MAINLY FOR WOMEN

ITEMS OF INTEREST

PRAISE FOR POTATOES. VALUED ARTICLE OF DIET. No praise is too warm for the potato, which has been described by one diet expert as food on a high plane of dietary dignity. It is of greatest food value when allowed to retain its skin: Dr. 11. K. Archbold, who has searched far and wide 'for details, has issued “The Potato as an Article of Diet,” says the London “MorningPost.” It is the first of a new series of miscellaneous pamphlets to be issued by the Potato Marketing Board.

. Dr. Archbold’s treatise consists of a bibliography and extracts from 82 books and articles published in many lands.

As showing the value of the potato as a food, it is mentioned that a number of observers have lived on potatoes, supplemented only by a little fat and salt, for considerable periods up to 300 days. Recently, one of them lived for four years on a diet consisting chiefly of potatoes and milk. “The general conclusion is that man can support life in health and vigour on a restricted diet, at any rate for a time; and indefinitely when the potato is the staple article in a slightly more varied diet.” Turning to the “vexed question of slimming,” the pamphlet states, that “there can be little doubt that, in spite of popular opinion to the contrary, the potato constitutes the ideal carbohydrate.”

According to one authority they “may well be retained in even a rigorously reducing diet,” provided that such things as sweets and pastries and excessive bread are banished. For those desirous, of slimming without the irksomeness of rigid adherence to specified weights of food a satisfactory diet would be fish, eggs, and potatoes eaten as desired. FOR THE UNDER-NOURISHED. In feeding up the under-nourished the potato is excellent for conveying fat in a manner acceptable to the patient. Other opinions declare that the potato is—■ Highly digestible. A rich source of many of the necessary mineral salts. Vastly superior in vitamins to bread. The chief anticorbutic of man; and 1 One of the most important sources ,'of energy in a mixed diet. “Opinion is united,” the pamphlet concludes, “that potatoes are best cooked in their jackets or steamed; next comes frying, and lastly boiling. "In preparing potatoes by peeling as much as 20 per cent of the tuber may be unnecessarily wasted, and in addition, the outside layers which are cut away are more nutritive than the inside.” NAZI IDEAS. WOMEN’S WORK., “Cgn typists darn socks?” was a question to which the last day of the great national occupational competition for young Germans should have pointed, the answer, writes the Berlin correspondent of ‘‘The Times.” For a week the young competitors of both 1 sexes, numbering, it is now stated, some 1,200,000, all over Germany, wrestled with the practical tasks and theoretical examination papers set by the organisers, the Labour Front and the Hitler Youth, with the idea of stimulating interest in work and discovering talent worthy of encouragement. On the last day came the turn of the clerical employees’ group, clerks, typists, shop assistants, and so on. “Der Montag” describes the day as spent by a group of girls between 14 and 16, whose test was held in a schoolroom. The general knowledge test came first. There were questions to answer such as "What significance has the Hitler Youth for me?” to which, apparently a highly approved answer is “The Hitler Youth is not there for me, but 1 for the Hitler Youth.” Then came more piactical questions, such as what to do to stop heavy nose bleeding. There followed household tasks, which none of the girl competitors was spared. However efficient they may be at their own work, they must show that they have an idea of how to tackle those everyday tasks about the house of which every German girl, at a future housewife and mother, should be capable. Holes had to be cut in stockings and darned, buttonholes sewn, ami other tasks were set which a busy office girl may tend to leave to others at home. The competition concluded with the test in the competitors’ own occupation; typing and shorthand, correcting bookkeeping mistakes, and answering questions such as “What would you do if you were sent to the bank with a cheque and lost it on the way?” The shop girls were set questions of tact; how, for instance, they would handle a mother and daughter who simply could not agree on a frock for the daughter.

AMUSING DEBATE. WHY BACHELORS WED. At the Y.M.C.A. Debating Society in Cape Town recently the “Y.M.’s” not yet in love coolly discussed .the merits and demerits of married life, states the “Cape Times.” When somebody feels moved to take up the masculine cause he will probably begin by a protest against the existing home and school training which does nothing to equip a man for life in the single state, argued a debater. Feminists have long since claimed woman’s i;.ight to an education which does not make matrimony its inevitable goal; but young men under present conditions are quite unfitted to bachelorhood. Boys, brought up to fhe idea that it is someone elsc’s business to count their washing, darn their socks, sew on buttons, or press their suits, are unprepared for the cold indifference and neglect of the average boardinghouse. Their sisters may suffer from the same soggy rice puddings, the same community sitting-rooms, with their appalling oil studies and elderly bores, but at least they are able, through habit, to care for themselves. “Most men get married because they want to escape boarding-house life. Provide the perfect substitute for the home and you will reduce the number of marriages by more than half.”

This disillusioning statement was offered as an axiom by a married man with grown children. 'rhe writer was shocked, and claims that marriage should, and often does, have a firmer foundation. But is not material comfort sometimes a strong contributory cause? ■ The writer knows a bachelor who is fortunate in having a very charming and unpossessive old mother. Under her expert management, the home leaves nothing to be desired. The food is well cooked, the house always neat without being uncomfortably so; the garden is their mutual interest. That man is 38 years old, and he still puts off getting married. He will have to be rather badly in love before he changes his mind. “But,” you may say, “if men consider their comfort so much, why do they often choose such helpless, incompetent wives?” True, many men fall to the wiles of the Laurelei, but not without a groan such as the hapless sailors must have 'uttered as they felt- themselves being charmed from the security of their vessels.

There are undoubtedly cases where relatives feel it necessary (though ineffective) to point out that a man’s choice is most unwise. But what of the domestic pearls? Do they languish unloved? Or are they not snapped up greedily whenever they are to be found? The one great difficulty is the increasing shortage of these girls. Florence was one such. She had partly inherited, partly acquired, a perfect knack in cookery; her cakes were always perfect; her pastries foathcrlight. And did she waste her sweetmeats on the desert air? Not at. all. She always had a retinue of admirers to tea. With cake plates balanced on their pointed knees they offered, her the homage of their grateful looks.

“How wonderful to leave boardinghouse fare for this!” they thought, and cast angry glances at their numerous rivals. Their only difficulty was to get Florence alone; they came to pray, and stayed to “scoff.” But they came again and again.

WHAT WOMEN DO.

CURIOUS OCCUPATIONS

Curious facts are made public for the first time' in the “Census of Occupations” for England and Wales. Women are revealed as the jacks of all trades. On the night of Saturday, April 26, 1931, when the great Census was taken, there was just one woman tram driver. Where is she now? There were also sixteen women gunsmiths, 16 women employed as plumbers, 27 as dock labourers, 422 as bookmakers, 508 as saddlers, and harness makers, one as a stock jobber, seven as stockbrokers, 19 as chief constables, inspectors and superintendents of police, three as navigating officers and pilots, one gamekeeper (then over 60 years old). Two married women registered as firemen, 49 as carpenters, 30 as masons, 20 as wheelwrights, 204 ministers of religion, 2810 as doctors, 116 as solocitors, and 205 as professional engineers. There were 5,606,043 women following occupations and 13,247,333 men. Married women at work numbered 896,702. Romance and tragedy are interwoven with these cold but interesting figures. Who has ever thought of a typist over 70 years of age? Yet of the 212,296 typists when the Census was taken, 26 of them wore 75 years of age mid over.

On the night when the Census web was cast there were 72,442 men of 75 years of age and over who were still following an occupation, and 19,364 women.

Retired men numbered 802,876, of which more than! 75,000 were 80 years of age and over, and 100,918 were bachelors. There were 172,416 retired women, and 44,793 were domestics.

Men employed on the land as agricultural workers numbered 1,116,573. Twelve thousand men were in Poor Law institutions and 550 in prisons throughout the country. It was found that England was earning its living in something like 35,000 different occupations. The foreign population totalled 183,869 persons. At the last Census in 1921 the foreign people in the country numbered 230,134 persons.

The country from which the largest number came was Poland, with 31,423 men and women. Russia came next, followed by Italy, Germany, America, and then France. The foreigners in England came from more than 36 countries. Thirty-eight men were horn at sea and had no nationality, likewise 37 women.