FACTORY GIRLS.

Gisborne Times, Volume LXVIII, Issue 10737, 7 November 1928, Page 9

FACTORY GIRLS.

'LIFE TOO MONOTONOUS.

A NOVELIST’S VIEWS,

(From “The Post’s” Representative) ' « LONDON,. Sept, t . Two things occupy the minds. or the majority of the four million girls between 14 and 23 who work in factories, They are : (1) Clothes and (2l) b °Mrs. Blanco White, the novelist (daughter of the Hon. W. Pembor Reeves and Mi's. Reeves), who makes this statement, says these girls ana their boys constitute a tragic problem which has to be tackled. Speaking at the National Union of Societies for. Equal Citizenship Summer School, at Oxford, she said that to-thoso. factory girls there was no subject’ so vital as boys. , . ■ “These boys -in factories lead tar more varied life than the girls,” said Mrs. Blanco White. “The girls minds get deadened their monotonous day’s work, and.if their snecial boy goes off, preferring a football match to their company, thdy, the fifteen and sixteen-year-old children, go home and break their hearts. “If their boys go off to another factory they go'too, so that they can come out at the same time and- walk home with them. This is also the reason why it is extraordinarily difficult to' persuade girls from their particular district and put them in better* positions as domestic servants. In many ways it is the fault of the employer for not giving tlicir girl employees work which they can think about."” Describing the average factory girl to be seen coming out of any big factory. Mrs. Blanco White said I . “They all look like children. They are short, particularly in the leg, with pretty little faces, usually thick with paint and powder, while invariably this particular type _ of beautv is marred by some physical defect such as adenoids and bad teeth. They are very smartly dressed in shoddy, cheap clothes, and they only go out with their particular boys. “The principal way of overcoming this tragic problem is,, a Ifctter, wider and longer education for git's, which would broaden their minds, and give them a more intelligent interestin the work they do. “Women,” she concluded, are not supposed to mind monotony to the extent that* men do. What would drive a man savage and turn linn into a Communist will only deaden a girl and make her stupid.”