Beware Of False Economy

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVI, Issue 21379, 23 June 1939, Page 14

Beware Of False Economy

Girl Wastes Ingenuity

A mother showed me a dress which her 19 years old daughter had made from a pair of discarded curtains, says a London writer. “Isn’t it marvellously ingenious of her?” she asked proudly. Well, the frock wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t very fresh. It looked as laboured as it had been—the result of hour upon hour of tiring stitchery, piecing the bits together, after work at the office was over. The girl earns very little money, and I am afraid that if she goes on toiling in her spare time over such tedious economies as this, being content wih such make-shift .she will not get very far.

Her ambition, at her age. should be to earn more money so that she can afford to buy better things. She should be going to evening classes to equip herself for higher paid work. Her energy is being frittered, exhausted, in a blind alley direction, in economy of the wrong kind. Another girl came to sec me. in an old frock which she had just had dyed. Dyeing cost 8s 6d. She had spent 8s 6d on belt, buttons and new frilling for neck and sleeves making a total of 17s. She made the frock herself in the first

place and the cost had been 16s. Had she stopped to think before running to the dyers, perhaps she would have decided that it would be an economy to make a new one instead.

I know an elderly widow with two sons: the boys do not earn much and she has a struggle to make ends meet. She suffers from a bad form of rheumatism, which is slowly crippling her because of her incessant work about the house. Her health will become a grim and expensive problem for her sons to cope with in a few year’s time. She tells me that she must go on, as there »s no other way, no question of affording help. But isn’t this wrong economy? She could obtain enough money to pay for reliable daily help by letting two of her furnished rooms or the money from one paying guest would make the same difference. She is a conscientious woman, but she is not being sensible in the right way. The obvious economy is not always the best one. Sometimes instead of trying to economise so that you can go on in the same way, it is far wiser to look around for an entirely different outlet; to start afresh on new lines.