OLD MAIDS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 47, 25 January 1926, Page 7

OLD MAIDS.

PREFERABLE TO BACHELORS. LADY ASTOR’S OPINION. LONDON, Dec. 5. Old maids are preferable to old bachelors, Lady Astor insisted, after some cryptic observations on both yesterday at the final session of the Social Insurance Conference, convened by tho League of Nations Union at the London School of Economics. ‘‘All should share in tho question of families, though I do not say that I want to get at tho bachelor.” she declared, amidst laughter. “I think that lie is the most helpful creature that ever was. He is tho one thing that makes matrimony possible. if you look at a bachelor you get a little more reconciled to your own husband. . ‘T cannot say tho same about old maids. They carry on the work of tho world, ■ whereas bachelors get crotchety and narrower as they get older. Old maids expand; old bachelors contract. Old maiden ladies, if they are interested in tho world, seem to get more beautiful as they get older; and the man (poor lonely animal), the older lie gets the lonelier ho gets.” On tho question of family insurance and endowments Mr H. N. Brailsford said that the scheme which ho preferred was a State scheme, in which tho whole of the resources for tho payment of children’s allowances should come directly out of taxation. Such a scheme, involving £210,000,000 a year, was inconceivable in the present temperature of politics, though that amount was less than our average expenditure on drink, while others might relato it to our expenditure on armaments. It had been estimated that tho annual expenditure on luxe urics was about £500,000,000 a year.