THE ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE OF WOMEN.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCVI, Issue 11049, 29 August 1896, Page 2

THE ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE OF WOMEN.

TO THE EDITOR. Sib, —The recent women’s conference held here passed a resolution recommending the aboye. The Bulletin, in a recent numbey, criticises it as follows: —“Apparently the wife is to have a share in the old man’s profits, while he stands all the losses himself. If he makes £>2ooo in his business one year, she gets £1000; if he loses .£I2OO next year, there is nothing said about her giving back £6OO, so he stands the whole racket. Therefore, at the end of two years she has got £IOOO, and he has £2OO less than nothing. Also, it seems that all his earnings are to go into a fund for maintaining the family; there is to be nothing left to form a reserve fund in his business to prevent it smashing up in some future period of disaster. The money is to be set aside for household expenses and the education, &e., of the children of their marriage. If pne of them has children by a previous marriage, or has a mother or grandmother or affiliation order, these latter responsibilities are wholly unprovided for. The old law may compel him to provide for them, and the new law, if it is ever passed, sets forth that his cash, is to go towards supporting the household and the present batch of children only. Altogether, there will be pleasant times ahead for the old man and his wife, the new woman, if the Maorilahd Hen Convention ever gets into working order.” I think the “Veras” and the members of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union bodies, who chiefly worry this subject, had better seek some other means to show their glorious independence and utter contempt for the male' worm, than by this peculiar and unworkable “ extinguishing the independence of man ” fad.—l am, &c., ISHMAEL.