AN AUCKLAND LADY ON SINGLE WOMEN:

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XXXIII, Issue 11283, 2 June 1891, Page 3

AN AUCKLAND LADY ON SINGLE WOMEN:

♦ Miss Jessie . 'Western, the authoress of ." Eo Mori," who is now in London, has an article in the current number of the National Beview, which the Chronicle describes as " striking' and original." It ••proffers s scheme for utilising the surplus women of the Old Country j or, rather, it . proffers two schemes. You pay your "money, and you take your choice. Mias Weston's first alternative is evidently taken from Dahomey, where the King is wily enough to arm a body-guard of Amazons. She sees no objection to train regiments of women to act in concert with men, and believes that, with a little training, they will turn out heroines ready to do and dare. The idea is fnnny .. enough, but in these days of lady cricketers and "strong women" might. be favowably entertained by the women themselves. We might begin with an experiment; in volunteering. A lady rifle corp would sound well, and lady scouts might prove as useful as lady guides. But Miss Weston's other alternative is more serious — this is to Bend the surplus women to the colonies to try tkeir hands at farming. Says the Chronicle, which devotes an article to tKe paper, "We confess the idea is original and ingenious, and well worth consideration in an age ■ where in the United Kingdom we have half-a-million marriageable women in excess of our marriageable men." Miss Weston suspects that this disproportion is due to the emigration of men, and thinks it only reasonable to send the women after them when they go to seek their fortunes beyond the seas. " The supreme merit of Miss Weston's paper," says the same enthusiastic writer, "is that she tackles the problem of the redvmdancy of women in the middle and upper middle classes, for whom the colonies are not supposed to afford any industrial openings.'' But for the details of the scheme. IJow is it going to work ? Simply this. '■f Married women, whose husbands are worthless or disabled, make the greatest mark as squatters, farmers, and' in business generally ; but that' is no reason why single women should not accomplish quite as.mucb." Fruit farming and fruit preserving, for example, are industries

capable of great c'cv<-lo] i> crt in Auf ( tali and New Zealand, and they are adapted to the use of wornr-n with brains. A i woman, thinks Miss Weftun, could make . a decent living out of a fruit farm of i from ten to forty acres in a temperate i colony ; upwards of 15,000 women do so now in America. Then there is cbickenraising, and vegetable farming, and honey-farming. All these industries offer a capital field for English girls, with a little capital. .Andorra without capital they can soon earn enough to make a small beginning, and having secured property, they could secure votes when they liked. Thus is opened a bright vista for tho unmarried women of this effete country. — London Correspondent Canterbury Press.