EXTRAVAGANT ECONOMY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12955, 26 August 1905, Page 6 (Supplement)

EXTRA VAG ANT ECONOM Y.

A Iviti'iNCHWo.M.v.N, says Mrs. J.olm Lane, writing on " The Extravagant Economy of Women'' in the Fortnightly, once expressed her amazement to me at the enormous amount of money Englishwomen spend, on what is useless as froth. Chiffon is the bane of the nglishwoman; she. drapes herself in cheap chiffons, while a Frenchwoman puts her money in a bit of good lace. She adorns herself with poor lira where a Frenchwoman would buy herself a little tiling, but a good little thing. Finally, when the thrifty Frenchwoman has gathered together quite a nice collection of lace and fur the Englishwoman has nothing to show for her money but a, mass of torn and dirty chiffon, whose destination is the rag-bag. After all it is an age of wax beads and imitation lace, and they represent as well as anything our extravagant economy. Is not our middle-class cooking a monument to our extravagance'.' A British housewife has it in. her power to take away tho stoutest appetite with her respectable joint, her watery vegetable, and the pudding or tart should lie as heavy on her conscience as they do on the stomach. If the Englishwoman would only lake lo the chiffons of cooking instead of the chiffons of clothes! It is an extravagance to cook badly; it is an extravagance to buy tilings because they are cheap; if is an extravagance to waste time in doing what someone else can do better (if one can afford it). I think it is only fair to employ others when one has the means. Don't we all want to live? Suppose editors wrote the whole contents of their papers, and publishers only published their own immortal works! What then?

It belongs to the economy of the universe that neither we not anything else should last for ever. Nature herself is methodically economical; witness Ihe regular passing of the seasons. And does she not utilise, one in the making of the next? Yes, what we women need most of till is to be taught tin extravagant economy, which includes the value both of money and of time, for the day is coming when women's time will really be worth something. So let women earn, at all events let them be given money as a right, and not as a begrudged charity, and 1 think it will be cheaper for men in the end, with the result that our economy will become less irresponsibly extravagant. Possibly we will not save much, but we may live better, and, joy of joys, the doctors' bills will undoubtedly grow beautifully less, for 1 am sure that the immense prosperity of that learned and disinterested profession is mainly due to our extravagant economy.