GIRLS IN INDUSTRY

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIV, Issue 10207, 18 February 1919, Page 3

GIRLS IN INDUSTRY

An advanced idea has been brought forward in London, where the .County Council is creating 320 scholarships er girls aged between 13* and 15*. uhe Council .proposes .to, train its. successful candidates not onlv in the household ads. of cooking and laundry, hut also in the, V-ados which demand individuality—m tailoring, millinery, upholstering, hairdressing, 'and photography. This is a move in the right direction, because bait the present industrial unrest comes from the lapsing of the trained craftsman. In the bvgone days the worker took an intellectual interest in his work. It was a. to lilm, but in tHese days oi mechanical production no one can be interested in turning out myriads of table legs each exactly alike, nor shirts by the hundred. All individuality, either dies out or more likely rushes into other and .more unsafe channels.-'- Now that! women are also being swept into the commercial maw the matter becomes vital to the lifeblood of the nation. But the chief-interest of the scheme lies in the maintenance grant of JBIO a years for two years. It is too low, and the London County Council could well afford to venture more fhan .£6IOO on the idea, but still it will tend to prevent scholars from throwing up their scholarships, says an English critic, as they have often done before, because a working girl must earn wages as soon as she can. Tnia allowance of 4s a week will help the workman to keep Ms daughter out el the factory, which she should never enter until'she is fully 16. Also the scholarships are properly confined to girls whose fathers do not earn A3IGO a year. It is an experiment; it is at last:a recognition, that a scholarship is useless to th< poorer child unless we (at least in parti _ feed and clothe it; it will not maka m employment, but it may steady "it, for factories never disband trained hands 'll thev can help it, .and so, if other localities take up the idea,- we may by degrees reduce industrial trouble. But the main value is the effect on the girl herself; it matters little to the world that Gladys should learn to sew six lapels an hoar instead of five, but it powrcfully matters that Gladys should learn to #ow them well, fo, therein lies pride of trade, that cousin of art, which makes her. a better woman because she has discovered in laboni the harmonious sensation «# doing something perfectly. -