"THE PUIR MITHERS."

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19382, 17 July 1926, Page 1 (Supplement)

"THE PUIR MITHERS."

CROSSES AND CROWNS.

BY ELSIE K. MORTON

" Ye've written a lot for the puir folk and the bairns lately," said an old Scottish lady who follows my work with a wary and critical eye. " Why don't you write something for the puir mithers?"

They were having a hard time of it, she contended, what with unemployment, whooping cough, bad weather and a totally inadequate old-age pension, so that I gathered she included " puir mithers "a of all ages. And thinking it over, I came to the conclusion that the world is not so kind to its mothers as it might be. Take the old folk, the hundreds of mothers whose sole stay is the pittance of the old-age pension, seventeen-and-six a week. How would you like to live on that ? Pay the rent of your room out of it, feed and clothe yourself, buy your firing and other necessaries ? It would not leave very much for the little pleasures and refinements of life, would it ? Of course you could go to the Charitable Aid Board and get a ration allowance, you could dress yourself in clothes that some other woman had left off wearing, butr—would you like it ? Yet that is how hundreds of old mothers are living in Auckland to-day.

With regard to the young mothers, they have trials and troubles all their own. Tho domestic problem, for instance, the difficulty in getting the right kind of help; the problem, among the poor mothers, of finding a landlord who will welcome a tenant with a brood of boys and girls. And, at the present moment, tho problem of keeping tho home going on one week's salary in four, and the twins down with the whooping cough. . . No, it's not much fun being a poor mother these days, one would imagine! Auckland Lags Behind.

Thinking things over, it seems to me that Auckland is harder on its mothers in some ways than any other big city in New Zealand. Take that matter of a rest room, for instance. How many years is it since the agitation was first started ? Time and time again the proposition has been turned down by the city fathers, and it is only within the last few days that the Auckland mothers have been ceded the privilege "that mothers in the southern cities have long enjoyed. When in Wellington a few weeks ago I paid a visit to the City Council rest room near Courtenay Place, an attractive brick building with a wide sweep of lawn and flower gardens in front. Here was every facility and convenience lor women visiting the city and mothers with children — toilet rooms and nursery, electric containers for heating infants' bottles or food for little children; hot water; an office where parcels could be left; comfortable lounges for those seeking a rest after a long journey, or waiting for train or steamer. The attendance was about two hundred a day, and Wellington mothers spoke of the place as a veritable boon.

Then that other furiously-debated matter —prams on trams. In Christchurch they make no more ado about taking infants' push-carts aboard than they do of' brief bags or suit cases, and in all the weeks I was there I never saw one single letter to the papers complaining about it, never heard of a single accident or delay to traffic because a conductor occasionally handed down to a mother a folding chair. In Dunedin I even saw ,vicker arks, real okl-fashioned prams with handles as high as gig wheels, stowed away in a kind of primitive cow-catcher arrangement on the front of the cable cars. Why should Auckland's unfortunate mothers —and fathers, too, for that matter -•-be compelled to walk weary miles push l , ing an infant when this baby traffic can be handled so easily and humanely in the South 1

In the public parks and ' picnicking grounds again there are gas rings and heating facilities, but Auckland has yet to follow the lead of the South in making things easy for its picnicking mothers. The Qugen City, of course, has had so many important things on her mind for years past—concrete roadways, waterfront railways, civic squares, and so on—that a few little things" have inevitably been pushed into the background, but sooner or later, no doubt, she will send an expert round the world to find out about the things they are doing successfully in the South. Meantime, I was interested the other day to see a beautiful shining tram glidirig empty along a beautiful concrete road, while a party of three men, three women, three infants and three folding chairs, climbed aboard a motor-bus. And that is a point I have much pleasure in passing on for the consideration of the next prams-on-trams deputation that waits on our city fathers! Halos Out of Date. Then that great class of mothers better off in this world's goods than those who are trying to exist on an inadequate pension, well advanced in middle-age and free of the thraldom of the pram—What of them ? Are they to be included among the " puir mithers " also? I think they are. Not the happy ones, of course, who haven't a care in the world, whose sons have presented them with perfect daughters-in-law and model grandchildren, whose counsels are listened to with respect, and advice adopted without question. Such thrice-happy ones as these are far beyond our praise or pity! But those others, the mothers who, in that beautiful and well-worn phrase have " borne the heat and burden of the day " only to find in eventide that the world has no use for halos, and has thrown aside all the old standards and traditions of motherhood of an earlier day. Such a new, topsy-turvy, helter-skelter world, they will tell you, so sure of itself, so impatient of old restraints and conventions ! Daughters who smoke, daughters-in-law who jazz and gad, grandchildren beyond fear of God and the rod, and only a laugh or a shrug when such things are mentioned. I think the present day must bo a very hard one for mothers, the mothers, that is, who have not yet fallen victim to the shingle, who yearn silently for the little lac„e cap that covered their own dear mother's scant and greying locks, who feel the world rocking beneath their feet, and see all their little cherished gods dethroned before their eyes. Not for them 4he cosy armchair, the cherished halo and placid eventide of old age! They must be up and doing to the last, for the world will have no slacking, . not even among its grandmothers. So mother must move with the times, smother all her yearnings for the deference and the privileges accorded the aged m her young days; she must mind her ways, and, above all, see that she offends jtiot with her tongue. Aye—"the puir mithers!" They all have their crosses, they'll all have earned their crowns!