SOCIAL CHANGES.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 5 July 1924, Page 13

SOCIAL CHANGES.

HAPPENINGS LAST YEAR IN LONDON. RUNNING NEWS STRIPS. In the year that has just passed seve.ral social features stand out as having arrived, or as being for the first time clearly discerned in 1923. One would put wireless at the head, declares the London correspondent of the Manchester Guardian. Not only has it spread all over every class of the community, but it is being bailed as an important step in the solution of the servant difficulty. Nearly every servants’ ball now has a wireless set, and in the ordinary middle-class house in the suburbs it is being recognised as a real inducement to make domestics remain.

The development of the electric; sign is increasingly important in town life.Piccadilly. Circus, with its drinking babies and climbing monkeys and smoking puppies and cycling gentlemen, and so on. is one of the first places to which a Londoner takes visitors and towards which children accelerate their parents. The particular development this year is the runing news strip, which gives the tape news as fast as it is received in tlie clubs. Crowds stand every night in Trafalgar Square excitedly reading the sort of thing they would' not look at in their .newspaper. The all-night restaurant has come, and people can be eating their bacon and eggs at any hour convenient to them. Clubs are admitting women more and more, but still as guests. Dancing has spread from the hotels to the shops! and anyone who goes or is taken to have tea at the mammoth new millinery shops in Regent Street has to endure the sight of melancholy youngish human beings gliding and juggling along as on a. moving pavement in the middle of the hall.

Night clubs continue to induce people to stay IJfi late, and the habit lias become decidedly more virulent in the jiast year. The difference between the present; night clubs and those of a generation ago is the - number of wellknown and even respected people in the upper ranks of society who not only go hut, desire it to be known that they go to night clubs. Jbe increasing democratisation of what used to be called West End life must have been noticed by all observers. It began with great showv restaurants with bands and table d hote dinners at three shillings a bead. It was said- at the time (quite unjustly, no doubt) that they “made the poor smart.” Since then the poor, or, as the French so much better say it/the petits riches, ha ve most I things of the kind that their richer and les s deserving. brethren have

There are, (‘heap night clubs, excellently managed and with good food, where thousands can sup, dance, and enjoy -cabaret amusements, and restaurants quite as stupendous in glitter and gaiety as the richest party could desire. There are, too, palais d-e danse on a tremendous scale, with beautiful floors and boxes often tenanted by pic-ture-postcard people. Further developments in the way of providing a West End for everyone are being planned by various astute and enterprising people-. The cinemas, of course, have contributed their big part to this movement. A few other "social changes that strike the observer of 1923 may be jotted down. The secret passion of the male for strong colours and queer patterns which, he nourished in under-garments burst out last year with astonishing virulence in sweaters at tennis and on the links. The eyesight of the caddies has been seriously affected by the FailIsland, Southsea blue lagoon, and majong sweaters and jerseys which the male as well as the female .golfer has brought into the- quiet English country, side. Once the epidemic was started in winter sports in Switzerland there could he no escape, but it ha s come to iltiigland like a spotted and criss-cross fever. Another feature in sporting places is that women are smoking more out of doors, and often as they walk, to the astonishment of American visitors.

The bowler bat has now become general again,, an J even the soft collar is declining in popularity, while in womens’ dress the chief thing that strikes a- man thi s winter is the absence of muffs and the presence of large furJined gloves and the primary coloured shoes in summer. The silk /rush opera hat has really come back again. But however keen the effort may he to return to pre-war standards of dress, tho motor-car will always lot thorn down, for people now travel so much by car and do so many things in one journey that clothes must inevitably reach looser .standards, and people change costurns less .than before. It would 'be pretty difficult now for a theatrical manage] - to insist absolutely on evening dress in his stalls and dress circle.