SUPERFLUOUS WOMEN.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 144359, 25 March 1914, Page 6

SUPERFLUOUS WOMEN.

EMIGRATION NO CURE. In his unflattering pamphlet concerning the suffragette agitation, Sii Almroth "Wright advanced the suggestion that the true remedy for the superfluity of women in England—which he regarded as the cause of all trouble —was for the superfluous ones to remove themselves to the Dominions and marry there. This view is examined at some length in the Second Interim Report of the Dominions Royal Compiission. The report points out that there is a superfluity of 1.179,000 women in England and- Wales and a deficiency of 226.000, as compared with males, in Australasia. But of tho surplus women in this country it appears that 610,000 are over forty and for tho most part are to he found in two classes, “elderly ladies and women servants,” of whom the former are “hardly possible migrants,” aud “tho latter can now ill be spared.”

MARRIAGE CHANCES. The fact is that domestic servant? are becoming scarce in tho Mother Country because there, as in tho Dominions, "the tendency is for women to adopt industrial and commercial life and to abandon domestic service.” Moreover, in Australasia the same problem which exists in England has arisen. "The proportion of unmarried women to married women between tho ages of 25 and 50 is practically identical with the proportions in England and Wales.” And, the report adds, "it would seem that, statistically speaking, the chances of marriage for women migrants aro only slightly higher in Australasia than at home.”

SERVANTS BY WIRELESS. If there is no great demand for wives in Australasia there is an “imperious and practically unlimited demand for female domestics. In some eases before a ship carrying women migrants sights tho land a large number of its passengers have been engaged by wireless telegraphy.” Yet complaints are made that tho women who go out "know too much or too little.” They are either factory hands and country girls, with no experience in service, or else skilled servants in some one department, and unwilling to undertake general work in the Australian house.

So urgent is the want of servants in Australasia that it was stated to the Commission in evidence that the lack of them "seriously affects tho health of housewives and even acts as a check upon tho growth of population.” *