W.C.T.U.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume VI, Issue 1624, 29 April 1919, Page 4 (Supplement)

W.C.T.U.

ANNUAL CONVENTION. Prtu Attoeial'on. XAPIER, April 28. At the sitting of the W.C.T.U. Convention this morning the report of the "White Bibbon" editor and business manager was read and adopted. Mrs Peryman was unanimously reelected editor and business manager and Mrs Evans associate editor. In the afternoon Mr Martin addressed the Convention, seeking its support for several amendments to the Shops and Factories Acts, particularly in securing better conditions for women shop assistants and for abolishing the late night. The following resolution was passed: "Seeing that the Government has already admitted, through two of its departments—the Health and Defence Departments —that the ordinary window's pension is not enough to keep a mother and her family, unless she either leaves her young children to the care of others while she goes to work, cr resorts to charitable aid for assistance, we would respectfully urge upon the Government the urgent necessity for giving all widows with young children a pension of not less than that granted to epidemic widows or widows of soldiers. We would further venture to point out that it is not in the best interests either of the individual or the State that a mother should have to leave her infant children to the care of others while she works to support them. On the other hand, if she does not do this, part of the maintenance of her family must ultimately fall upon the State or the community through the Education Department (charitable aid), and her children have to carry a stigma from this source which it should never have been their misfortune to incur."