LADIES' GOSSIP.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6215, 1 August 1898, Page 3

LADIES' GOSSIP.

["Canterbury Times."! Nothing could better prove Mr Tillett's incapacity to understand the attitude of Australasians than the attack which he made upon women in his Wellington address on " the aims of true democracy." Women, he said, were crueller than men in their contempt for the straggling lower strata. A more unjust-thing cannot be said .of the sex to-day, however true it may have been two or three decades ago, and Mr Tillett is certainly the last man from whom one would have expected the revival i of such an out- worn notion. If Mr Tillett had taken the precaution to rid his mind of all his preconceived ideas about the colonies, and had taken the trouble to study the trend of colonial thought during the months he has been with us, he might by this time have been able to discover that the uplifting of this very lower strata is precisely what is absorbing the attention of the thoughtful section of women. Where is real sympathy to be found for this " lower strata " — sympathy shown by deeds, and net oy denunciatory speechifying? J Who is trying to raise fallen women and set j them on their feet once more? Who is burning with a desire to reform the drunkard? Who is agitating for an enlightened system oi treating our neglected children and" our criminals? is it the men alone? Kmphatically no. It is the sex that stands charged with contempt for these very unfortunates. Truly they take a somewhat curious wav of showing this " cruel contempt," and the more they show of it the better, one would think. The natural inference from Mr Tillett's words is that he is ignorant of the mighty movement among women not only in the colonies, but in Great Britain, on the Continent, in the United States — a movement which has precisely those reforms for its object which deal with the broadening of life for those who have hitherto been trampled under food. Good women, whose sympathies are ever with the weak, chafe against a waiting policy ; but their impatience to better existing conditions does not blind their natural instinct for thoroughness in their reforms. They will not be content with a partial cleansing of the Augean stables. They would cleanse them thoroughly, but they seek more than this ; they would make such cleansings needless in the future. Whether they are wise in attempting such a more than Herculean task is not the question. Doubtless it would be well to content themselves with small beginnings, but that is not the point at present. It is a libel on women to accuse them, especially the women of Australasia, with a contemptuous indifference to the wrongs of others. Never before was the meaning of motherhood and all that it implies, better understood by women .than it is to-day, and it is this comprehension that is stirring them everywhere to an infinite compassion for tlie waifs and strays of humanity. Only a woman could cry : See the people who suffer, all people! ' All humanity wasting its powers Am i D^ t0 hft ? d str »«?le~deatli dealing. All children of ours. The blind millionaire-the hlind barlot— n V ie t W Preacher leading the blind°7 *''."* o f ,. th <»rj>ain, how it huris them, Our little blind babies-mankind ! No mother will allow herself to be parted from her cluldren, and these are all her chiloren. No one who had studied tho woman question of to-day could fall into so gross a mistake as to say whaU Mr Tillett said. Does he know anything of the organised crusado ms^, vice of suc h^omen as the late Frances Vvrilartf or of Mrs Josephine Butler and her army of assistants? Does he know anything ot the immense ramifications of rescue work earned on in every English-speaking country, and in many foreign ones, by women? And what of tho large nursing sisterhoods, or of the noble work done by the women doctors in letting flight into the dark spots in our civilisation/ These may be small things— mere rushlights trying to illume the vi':rld. but they are, nevertheless, signs of the times. Vital thought is kindling i v women's .-mils, but it is not grren to the superficial and noisy demagogue to perceive its workings.