WITHIN THE COMMONWEALTH

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLII, Issue 11, 17 March 1909, Page 48

WITHIN THE COMMONWEALTH

Gertie and Bertie. /qTENATOR THEN WITH (Victoria) Jias epitomised a great troitblesome problem in the simple case of tiertip and Bertie. Gertie goes upstairs and gets a billet, with the result that Bertie comes down on the lift, and there is another woman in the great field of industrial competition, and another new face among the unemployed. It is further asserted in condemnation of this growing difficulty, a difficulty that threatens social revolution, that Bertie, having lost a fifty shilling billet, cannot marry, ami Gertie, having gained a 20/ engagement, does not want to, so that the success of the cheap women in the struggle for jobs aims a blow at the nice, and threatens to play the deuce ami all with our civilisation. It is an easy matter to throw oft’ little jibes at Bertie and at Mr. Trenwith, his champion, but Bertie’s misfortune is undoubtedly a national evil, and the best attempt the “Argus” can make to belittle the problem amounts only to an unwitting confession of its mischievous nature, indeed, it is doubtful if a great newspaper in that delicate position in which it is called upon to speak the truth, impugis, it whoso list, ever made a more conspicuous fool of itself in an effort to confuse a plain issue ami decry a rapidly increasing evil. The Senator said that the girl who takes Bertie’s 50/ job. and receives 20/ for performing his duties, is robbed; the r *Argus’’ replies that Gertie has small responsibilities, slip has no drags upon her, she has not to support the burdens of matrimony, anti can live on less than Bertie, consequently to say she is robbed is a malicious untruth. This is a. new view of the morality of the wage system: it is founded on the principle tliat just enough to live on is always sufficient for a worker, if a ( liinaman were to come in later and take the job from Gertie, and perform her duties for Id/ a week, the “Argus” argument would be just as. powerful in supput of the ( how as it is in support of the white Australia damsel. The gospel of the great daily is the mean gospel of cheapness, a gospel Australia has repudiated in a thousand ways. Really, tne position of Gertie and Bertie will have to have more serious consideration, if not ti-day. then to-morrow, unless the new woman is prepared io return to the primitive conditions to which the very old woman had to submit, when the aboriginal man loafed at home, while the aboriginal woman tilled the fields or hunted the game. With the ever-increas-ing power of machinery. it is certain great civilised communities cannot find employment for all the people, men. women ami children. If women continue to encroach, men must go out. and if the encroaching woman can only edge in by doing work much more cheaply than man. where would a general spread of female labour lead us if not in a quaint community run on the lines of the beehive, where a few drones are retained to perpetuate the race, ami the rest of the mahs are killed oft as useless ami unnecessary lumber? The Coloured Person. 1 beg to advance. my limited experience of the coloured person. For my sins, I have been compelled By Providence to dwell in a chaotic boarding-hou-e that peiches on the nose of a suburban cliff, like a morbid seagull contemplating suicide. It is not on the brow of the cliff, where the free winds of Heaven could blow in the back door and blow out the front, taking with them the pale green >nn ll of cooking: it is halfway up, so that the back of the house is jvunbed against the solid rock like the latter end of a desperado who has been brought to (Xeutial) bay. ami is putting up a last stand against fearful odds ami wore cooking. Hanging prrearimtslj over my liead (I have u back room) is a cheap lodging house, crammed' with cheap lodger**, and pervaded by a landlady who wears her hair in curlpa pers in the morning and goes out mysteriously to dine with the local nobility at night, dud in a red silk evening dress and a look of cold scorn. It i« one of my favourite nightmares that the cheap

lodging-house will be blown down some nigiit when the wind is high, and that I will wake and find my room tilled with broken bricks and cheap lodgers, and the landlady in the dress that looks like the burning of London in the days of Charles Two. However, this is getting away from my own lodging-den, and my experience of the coloured person, who is the cook thereof, and a proud nigger to boot. (It is on record that one lodger booted him in the fragrant long ago, but he was a strong man, and is now dead. Peace to his feet!) Well, this undesirable alien, who spoils the viands for us, has an unreasonable prejudice against boiled eggs. 1 love a hard-boiled egg for breakfast, but 1 can’t obtain it unless the inaid-in-waiting cooks it with her own fair hands—and a little assistance from the gas stove. She informs me that, at the mention of hard-boiled eggs, the undesirable flies into a fearful passion and rolls his eyes murderously at the meat-chop-per. Wherefore she finds it easier to do it for me herself. Although I have been resident in the house now for six months, 1 have never sighted the cook; he dwells apart, in the kitchen, and is not visible to the undressed eye. If ever I meet him, I will demand at the point of the carving knife—which is an incredibly blunt instrument —on what grounds he refuses to boil my morning egg. 1 will demand to know if eggs are against his political principles, or if they clash with his religious convictions, and if he doesn't give me a satisfactory answer I will carve his turban into four pieces and throw the four fragments in the range. 1 dislike having to take extreme measures, but the insolence of this Asiatic with regard to my egg is driving me to desperation. •£-<£><?> An Escaped Gorilla. There was wild excitement in one of Melbourne's busy streets one night recently. Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story of an escaped monkey. The present history is first cousin to it. There is in the possession of a practical joker a remarkably fine gorilla skin, hideously life-like. A friend of his rushed into the street suddenly the other evening very late, and informed a motor-man and some cabbies, that a huge monkey had escaped, to look out for it. The man in the motor, with a cynical smile, observed that if he saw it a hot reception would be its lot, and that people ought to be locked up for keeping such pets. Next minute the animal dashed into the street, and pandemonium at once prevailed. The first to howl and run for it was the motor-man: then the cabmen ran for it, leaving vehicles to their fate, the horses being in terror at the ugly, dancing, chattering apparition. A policeman hid himself somewhere, and the street was utterly deserted. Then, as a crowd hove in sight, the monkey - man’s friend, about half his size, took him gently by the paw, and led him indoors like a lamb. Instantly he skipped off, and when several policemen and informers gained admittance of course nothing was to be seen. The disgusted men in blue thereupon accused those who had complained of seeing things. The joke has since been given away, but the actors in it don’t care about talking of it. <s> <s■ A Word for Maorilawd. New Zealand House of Representatives takes a more serious view of public petitions than do most Parliaments. As a rule these documents are read or “taken as read,” and thereafter never again mentioned. üßt New Zealand Parliament has two Public Petitions Committees, one dealing with the prayers of persons named from A. to L., the other with those named from M. to Z. The committees investigate and report with or without a recommendation. From the report of the A. to L. Committee recently received, it appears that during the session, the committee held eleven meetings. dealt with 128 petitions, recommended that two lie fully complied with, IS referred to Government for consideration, and 28 for favourable consideration, while in 70 it made no recommendation, and in four postponed decision. The scheme is one which might with advantage be imitated by Australia.

The Australian XT. Somebody writes: "Do you honestly believe that the Board has the interest Of cricket mostly at heart in the recent struggle, and not the clipping of the wings of a most prominent player?” In reply, "The Bulletin” unhesitatingly says it does. The clipping of the wings of a most prominent player was necessary, unless international cricket was to become a business and not a healthy sport rivalry. The "Players” deliberately tried to put cricket on a boodle basis and to make the Australian XI. a close corporation, togain admission to which it would soon have become necessary to pay a handsome premium. It was the most impudent thing that has ever been attempted in the history of pan-Britannic sport. And to defeat the machinations of the gang who were working to make cricket a business, any measures short of assassination were legitimate. The gang stopped at nothing, and when that sort of boodler crops up, he has to be dealt with in the most rough and ready manner. The same writer asks “The Bulletin” to justify the selection of Hartigan and McAlister, and the rejection of Hopkins and Gehrs. Well, the justification is that the Board of Control selection committee, which represents the cricket associations of Australia, chose the first two and rejected the second pair.

And as they had much more information at their disposal than the general public, and could devote much more time to the job than the writer, he is quite prepared to leave the matter in the committee’s bauds. Anyhow, if the Board has made a bloomer, it is not such a dreadful one as to be worth making a row’ about. There’s mighty little difference between them all. The most necessary thing was to establish the authority of the Board, and that has been done. - <S> <S> Dreadfully High Life. Slippering stage beauties has become a favourite pastime of the gilded youth —and tarnished old age. I know that the practice is not exactly new, but it had fallen into comparative disuse. Now there has been a recrudescence, and hardly a night passes but one of the swell cafes holds a supper party or two, composed of principal boys and village maidens, and the gayest of gay men about town. It is a tribute to the attractions of “Cinderella” that it is supplying the fair ones for most of these supper parties. Perhaps it is that the ladies of the Theatre Royal are more companionable, or perhaps they are better known and have more friends. Anyhow, there they are night after night, with half-dozens of the very nicest young men we have got and half dozens of the most golden-topp-ed bottles the cafes own. The most notable of the suppers of late was one given by a famous racehorse owner and plunger who has gone out of the business and bade farewell to the turf and the bookies in a rollicking supper, with taxieabs at 2.30 a.m. The late cafe and the licensing law and the taxicab have turned Melbourne into a city of dreadfully high life.

A Judge On False Women. In the Melbourne Divorce Court, John Bunyan Flitton, aged 30, of I’rahran, draper, sought a dissolution of bis marriage with Ethel Flitton, aged 20, on the grounds of misconduct, William Williams being joined as co-respondent. The parties were married on April 12, 1901, and there was one child of the marriage. 'Hie suit was undefended. On December 18, a few days after respondent left him, petitioner met ner ami co-respondent at St. Kilda. He tried to punch Williams, who got behind Mrs Flitton every time, and eventually ran away. Next morning his wife rang him up on the telephone, and said: "Billy Williams will fight you a fair go, any time ami place you like.” The Chief Justice said: “The actions of this woman appear to be so remarkable as to be almost incredible. She has not only no regard for her husband and child, but after she has wronged her husband she must add insult to injury by ringing him up on the telephone. She is an abandoned woman in the fullest sense of the term. In Morocco the woman of that kind is placed on the back of a mule naked, and taken through the streets so that all who care may beat her with sticks. It hardly seems as though it would be bad if such a thing were done here.” A decree nisi was granted, with costs against the co-respondent.

Clever Girl Swimmer. - Once again woman has asserted her equality with man. Ruby Boobier has to be thanked for the assertion this time. She swam in the eight miles race down the Yarra with a party of men. Ruby Boobier is, however, an exceptional girl. It would lie hard to find 1 another lady swimmer in Victoria, certainly, who could succeed in equalling Ruby’s feat. After all, it’s a useless sort of accomplishment (says a woman writer in the Melbourne “Punch.”) ItJ is very wonderful, of course, that a girl should lie able to swim eight miles, conquer a bad cramp in the leg, and stilj finish where men had failed. But what good is it all. I can’t for the life of me see that it proves anything more than what I have already stated, that Ruby’ Boobier is an exceptional girl. She is like a fish in the water, except that she gets cramps, and fish don’t. (At any rate, I’ve never known one to complain of it). But her performance does not place the rest of us in any higher, plane. It leaves us just where we were, certainly not equal with man, but a considerable deal above him. - ' «<•><•> Labour Paper. The great Labour daffy, Which is to knock out all the other papers in Australia, is not going to be born just yet awhile. The Unions have returned al majority of votes against the proposed paper. The working man wants news’, not acres of platform propaganda, and he knows when he is getting good value for, his penny. Labour members will have to continue sighing for a paper that will print all their pitlie.