The White Ribbon: FOR GOD AND HOME AND HUMANITY. Friday, November 15, 1907. A WOMEN'S EXHIBITION.

White Ribbon, Volume 14, Issue 150, 15 November 1907, Page 7

The White Ribbon: FOR GOD AND HOME AND HUMANITY. Friday, November 15, 1907. A WOMEN'S EXHIBITION.

The Exhibition of Women's Work, which kad\ North cote lias just opened in Melbourne.is a unique enterprise south of the Line, and tin* Commonwealth has gone into it with astonishing heartiness ; in fact, the scope and magnitude of the exhibition has far surpassed the most sanguine dreams of its promoters. A more timely and apropos undertaking there could not be, in view of the fact that the real problem of the industrial world to-day is woman's true position in it. If woman is to continue neither fish nor flesh in the matter of her work, if she has to go on doing man's work on hoy's wages, an actual breadwinner under the guise of au irresponsible amateur, it will be necessary to convince the best men of our time that her work is as essentially inferior as it is tacitly assumed to be. And this exhibition will make it extremely hard for the visionary Conservative to make out his traditional ease. There is not a seemly form of athletics omitted from the physical culture department, not a phase of technical and art work unrepresented, and. most convincing of all. the domestic and the scientific have been blended with signal success in the children’s department. including the model

nurseries, accommodating 50 babies at a time, which department will give valuable lectures and demonstrations on the lines of Infant Life Preservation. Seeing that every State in the Commonwealth has had thousands of women at work for months, and that the (iovernmeiit has given valuable assistance through the Education and Hailway Departments. the influx of visitors will he great, and the permanent results cannot fail to be great also. New Zealand has taken no national part in the Exhibition, but it has sent over private specimens of art work, such as the hand-made hooks of Miss Ettie Hunt, of Christchurch. Also, the Wellington Museum authorities are responsible for an interesting exhibit of Maori women’s work. J.M.