WOMAN’S WORLD

Southland Times, Issue 18927, 28 April 1923, Page 14

WOMAN’S WORLD

BREACH OF PROMISE. U.S. BILL TO THWART ADVENTURESSES. NEW YORK, February 28. The growing scandal of breach of promise suite in which susceptible juries award heavy damages to weeping and beautiful American women has led to the introduction of a Bill in the New York Legislature providing that “No contract or agreement between two parties for marriage is valid unless it is in writing and duly sworn to before a notary public.” The author of the Bill, Mr Hackenburg, describes it as aimed at “designing adventuresses’’ who exploit the existing law solely for blackmail. The Bill limits the damages for breach of promise to five cents, and the recovery of any personal or real property transferred under the conditions of the engagement contract. In introducing it to-day Mr Hackenburg observed: “Times have changed since grandma was a girl. A trusting female endowed with the right to sue for alleged damage to her feelings has become an anachronism in an age when woman is self-respecting, selfsupporting. and with a definite place in the industrial activities of the world. MISS ELLIS SAFE. PLUCKY LADY DOCTOR (By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Australian and N.Z. Cable Association.) DELHI, April 22. Miss Ellis is now in charge of Mrs Starr, near Khabkibazar, Tirah, in a weak condition. Her feet are crushed and bleeding with walking, but she was not otherwise molested. Mrs Starr is a European lady doctor attached to the Peshawur Medical Mission, who heroically volunteered under Afridi escort to get into touch with the rebels and minister to Miss Ellie’s needs. She was given every assistance by the tribesmen on tfie journey to Tirah. Pending the final rescue of Miss Ellis, punitive measures against the offending tribesmen are held in abeyance. (A message received on April 16 stated: —An abominable outrage occurred on Friday night at Kohat, in the North-west Province, when raiders entered the bungalow of Major Ellis, an officer of the Border Regiment, who is on the staff of the Kohat district. Major Ellis was away. The raiders cut his wife’s throat with daggers and carried bis 15-year-old daughter into captivity, despite the fact that an officer was sleeping in the bungalow as a precautionary measure.) AFTER THE FOX TROT? CHANGES IN FRANCE. Reports of the death of the foxtrot have come in only less often than that of Lenin. And yet the fox-trot goes on in Paris and plays the star part as well in the salons of the Faubourg St. Honore as in such democratic dancing-halls as the Bal Bullier. In view of the crush of balls just now in Paris the fox-trot would seem-to have as strong a hold as ever, bift for certain little significant signs which may perhaps be the writing on the wall. For one thing, there is nobody nowadays who cannot fox-trot, which to the elect is not a desirable qualify. And the elect have taken the drastic step of reverting in a fashionable ball to a number of the old dances—dances which took a great deal of learning and demanded a manner and distinguished their dancers very sharply from those who did not possess it. “Harriet, my love,” said Grandmamma Selby with an air, and Harriet stepped out blushing and trod a measure with Sir Charles Grandison—a performance which very justly went down to history in the family annals. It is, of course, one thing to revive old dances and another to change the modern style of dancing. Some people have attributed the popularity of the fox-trot and all its brothers and sisters to the fact that it is easy. This is, of course, incorrect. The fox-trot, danced well, is not easy at all, and when it looks easy it is demanding a very high standard of dancing. Moreover, the easy dance is not necessarily the mast popular. Girls used to toil comfortably through the mazes of the lancers and the quadrilles, and were by no means abashed at the memory-work therein implied. Even more recently the number of people in Paris who undertook to tango was legion, and the tango is perhaps as difficult as any dance ever invented. The difficulty, therefore, of minuets and pavanes and the rather more plebeian gavottes is not the factor which need necessarily make them unpopular. Dances really turn a good deal on the clothes worn and the type of mind obtaining at the moment. The war, which bottled people up in one direction, made for complementary laxity almost naturally. Foxtrots suggested lack of ceremony and fitted in with the feeling of the day. But now people are beginning again to realise that ceremony was really invented because it was amusing and flattered the vanity and gave an ordinary person a distinction which he might otherwise not have had. And so it is possible that, the fox-trot and similar dances may suddenly seem suited for what are generically known as “natives,” but- not for those who live more sophistical ed lives.

The minuet is, of course, extraordinarily charming, and for ordinary purposes its multifarious steps can be reduced to something within the compass of the average person. It is peculiarly suited to the French type with its curious combination of impulsiveness and convention. The Boston came to England via Paris, so did the cake-walk, and so did the tango. In fact, whatever the two Americas provide passes through the Paris filter before it is accepted. If the pavane and the gavotte are not generally accepted, there is always the minuet, and the thin edge of the wedge with regard to the minuet is perhaps the

cotillon, now so long despised by modern youth. One thing is certain—the time is ripe for something other than'4he fox-trot, though whether it is to be the minuet or the “can-can” remains to be seen. “KNITTED” CLOTH MAKING THE LOOM LOOK ANTIQUATED A small group of experts in the hosiery trade have discovered now to manufacture on a knitting machine certain kinds of cloth at least ten times faster and many times cheaper than on a loom (says the Manchester Guardian). Already a number of Nottingham hosiery firms are putting the claims of the discoveries to the test, and are getting remarkable results. This new competitor of the loom is a circular knitting machine of unUsual size. It turns out at an almost incredible rate a close, firm-textured fabric which, When finished, is indistinguishable from the produce of the loom. For a long time the hosiery trade had concentrated on making a garment which in its twin qualities of elasticity and lightness would be pre-eminently suitable for underwear. Having chased the product of the looms from the underwear market the hosiery manufacturers turned their attention to outer garments like overcoats, and ladies’ coats and jackets made in knitted material. For two years the coarser fabrics of the heather mixture variety have been successfully tested, and lately it has been shown that with finer textures of the Melton class remarkable results can be obtained by the use of knitting machines; and when the goods are finished in the same way as woven cloth, they give a firm texture and stand the test of ordinary wear. They are dyed in the piece. It is in the matter of productivity that these new knitting machines make the present power-loom seem as antiquated as its hand or foot operated ancestor. It has for years been the complaint of the inventor that the weaving loom has reached its limit in regard to production because of the principles on which it is constructed, and many efforts have been made to invent a circular loom. This ideal, lam told by Professor Davis, of the University College here, has been achieved by the knitting machine which I have mentioned. ONE GIRL—TWO MACHINES

It is called the 80-feed circular latch needle frame, and is made by the Nottingham firm of George Blackburn and Sons. At a low estimate it will produce a fabric at the rate of one yard a minute for general clothing purposes. A girl can watch two machines. The fabric which is made by this knitting machine, probably the largest by far in the world—the Americans have built machines up to 40-feeds, —is of double width with a very tight stitch, and when suitably milled, steamed, raised, and cropped, presents a very dressy appearance. Even before the building of this 80-feed machine the knitting machines were competing in a small way with the looms. For several years one Nottingham firm has been making heather mixture men’s overcoatings for winter wear, and has been able to sell them at a lower price than the woven fabric. After two years of wear these knitted cloths are said to show no tendency to sag or bag or lose their any way. If that is so it may not be long before the knitting machines are placing on the market a cloth with’ so little stretch in it that it can be used for men’s suite. A SATIRE OF CIRCUMSTANCE

It is ironical that the good fortune of this discovery should have fallen upon a trade which has no lack of orders and no unemployed, while the lace industry, in doleful idleness, looks on. There are factories which for two years have not made an inch of lace. Fashion, first of all, is against them. Women, it is said, no longer wear frilled underclothing; they have adoptetd the less voluminous but lighter and more hygienic products of the hosiery people. It was the “hobble” and then the short skirt, they say, which drove the petticoat out of the woman’s wardrobe. Germany, Nottingham’s best pre-war customer, is “dead”; Austria, a former market, is also “dead”; Russia is another casualty of the economic eruption. One firm which before the war had 3,000 accounts with Russia has none to-day. France has increased her tariff against Nottingham lace by 4A times, and America has raised her duty on lace from 60 to 90 per cent ad valorem. Faced with such a blank prospect the lace industry must either become reconciled to a further long starvation wait for orders or seek fresh outlets. This cloth-knitting machine may provide a profitable outlet. Strictly speaking, the new industry would seem to be an adjunct of the hosiery trade, but a number of lace firms are reported to be considering very seriously the question of putting their idle hands to work upon it.