WHY NO UMBRELLAS?

Taranaki Daily News, 31 October 1935, Page 6

WHY NO UMBRELLAS?

FEW SEEN AT STRATFORD. INTERESTING EXPLANATION MADE. Have the people of Stratford become so inured to the wetness of their district that they no longer notice the rain—that they look on a rainy day as the rule rather than the exception? This interesting suggestion was made to a News reporter at Stratford yesterday by a man who supported his idea with a comment on the comparative scarceness of umbrellas in the town. For a place where there was so much rain, he said, there were remarkably few men who carried umbrellas, though most women did.

No better day for observations in connection with this theory could have been chosen —it was undeniably and continually wet—and the results seemed to justify his remarks. There were indeed very few umbrellas to be seen all day. At lunch time there was a steady drizzle, yet of the dozens of Stratford men who walked home for lunch not half a dozen carried umbrellas. During the day, for the many little expeditions across the street or up the .town, when it was not worth while to don an overcoat, they went round completely unprotected.

Inquiries made of those who sell umbrellas. confirmed the observations—only a few umbrellas were sold at all. He did not expect to sell umbrellas to young men on farms, remarked one outfitter, but he was rather surprised that the younger men in town did not use them. Most of those who bought them were older men. He commented, too, that it was usually the better class umbrella that was bought—it was usually the man who could afford a good one that bought one at all.

Most of the women had an umbrella, of course, to protect their hats. Few women’s hats were intended to be worn in the rain. The men on the other hand wore their hats because of the rain.

He could give no specific reason for the umbrella’s failure to find favour. Possibly men could not be bothered with them—he admitted himself that he seldom used one for that reason. Men had not been used to carrying them, he said, though of course in the cities they were much more popular. He had sold a fair number on special occasions, such as race days, when the purchaser perhaps expected to be standing about a lot in the open on a wet day, or were wearing their best clothes.

The lack of interest in men’s umbrellas was attributed by another man connected with mens attire to a lack of tradition in dress in New Zealand. In England, for instance, an umbrella was often the accepted complement to the attire of the well dressed man, 'he said, whether it was raining or not. He showed some illustrations in an English dress periodical to support his remarks. The umbrella, slim and correctly folded, was featured with certain outfits just as a cane was essential to others. It was a part of the dress. The average New Zealander, when he used one at all, held it over him when it was raining and, when it was not, carried it grasped round the top like a weapon. The fact remains that, quite apart from questions of dress, the average man at Stratford tramps to and from the shop or the office in the rain for probably more than half the year, apparently careless of the weather. There is occasionally “thrown up” at the Stratford resident the insinuation—quite unfounded on fact —that he develops webbed feet af-ter the first few months of unrelenting rain. Might it not be suggested with equal aptness that he also quite possibly sheds w .ter like a duck?