Girls of India

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22819, 28 August 1937, Page 9 (Supplement)

Girls of India

month should have a red-letter mark in the Indian calendar, for with the expiry of Juno girls and women were no longer permitted to work in India's coal mines. With its enormous number of poor people who can neither read nor write, and therefore know nothing about the social status of workpeople in other lands, India is naturally a backward country. Perhaps they will never realise what magnificent feats for their emancipation and general betterment in health, wealth, and happiness have been achieved. If we had in our own land but a tithe of the marvels of engineering which Britain has performed in India for the irrigation of dry lands, for the suppression of epidemics, and for the banishment of . famine we should never know either drought or floods in our own green acres. The. Indian girls would feel something in common with us if they knew that in the lifetime of Queen Victoria British women, as well as little boys and girls, toiled like animals in mines.