PROBLEMS AWAITING SOLUTION.

White Ribbon, Volume 17, Issue 203, 18 May 1912, Page 10

PROBLEMS AWAITING SOLUTION.

Tin- following paper was read bv Mrs .1. Hendelv at the Dunedin Coin ention : We olleii hear it charged against temperance reformers that when thev have succeeded in checking or stopping the tree use of alcohol they will not l>c content with having achieved that end, but will proceed next to wage war against smoking, gambling, and other social vices of the present day, until life will be one small paddock ot barbwire prohibitions, from which there is no escape. The coinplainer expects our .svmpatuv, and he has it ; lor anvom so wedded to the foolish practices that he blindly deems so harmless, either to himself. to society, or to his offspring, deserves our sincerest pity. Hut it is well that it should be recognised that our efforts do not —must not —begin and end with the abolition of the liquor traffic, though that giagantic evil seems sometimes to loom so large as to cover the whole hori/on. For beyond th.it and the abolition of smoking and gambling there are Ilianv other reforms to be hoped for. prayed ior, and worked lor, remembering the old saying of the old saint : " Work as il all depended on yourself : pray .is if all depended on God.” Some of these reforms, which are scarcely vet recognised as being within the range of “ practical politics,’’are so vast and so lar-reaching as to maac even the abolition of the liquor traffic seem a small tiling ft is even possible that some of them lnav have to be achieved before the liquor traffic m all its forms can be counted a thing of the past. First, what of the children ? Is it too much to claim, to demand, to insist, that every child brought into this world must be well-born physically, mentally, and morally ? Should we not emphasise the fact that to bring children otherwise than through unavoidable misadventure into the world endowed with inferior or deficient physique, perverted moral instincts, or enfeebled minds, is A CRIME AGAINST THE CIIIU),

the nation, and humanity ? Wc have only to stand in any busy street to see how far the race has fallen below the standard of the

“ Ullage and likeness of God through centuries ol disregard of llit l4insic.il .md moral laws ol Well-Being. We have no right to put off the re-establishment of that standard till we reach another world. What this world has seen tins world should see again, and it is lor women, the mothers of the race,to hold the ideal of chat standard steadily before the race as a thin attainable. In doing so we need amber that the ill-born are not <• »ne the product of those who are now recognised as defectives in mind or body. There is at the present da\ a growing demand that in the interests of the coltlinunitv the reproduction of recognised defectives should be prevented. Hut more is needed. The world is full of those who, while they owe their parentage to those who are apparently pcrlcctlv normal, arcvet endowed with weaknesses, perversions. and delects attributable onlv to wrong living oil the part ol one or both parents. It is not alone the children born out of wedlock who are unwanted ; not alone thev who “ happen ’’ ; not alone thev who are born in fear and sorrow, or, as tln old Hook puts it, “ born in sin and shapen in iniquitv,” because not carefully, lovingh, and above all, intentionally brought into the world. We have vet to recognise parentage as a vocation, to be prepared for as c a refull \ —not by mothers only, but equally by fathers—as any other profession in the world ; for indeed it is the oldest and ideally the noblest of all professions. And this brings me to the second point— THE EDUCATION OF THE CHILDREN.

They must be trained so that their children shall be better than they. Much of our modern system of education needs to be thrown on the scrap-heap, ior in teaching the knowledge which is supposed to enable us to get a living, we artforgetting to teach how to live. Our educational svstem busies itself with cramming into the children's heads many details of a history which is mainly a record of kings and their ways, while the history of man and his development remains untaught ; : - geography which consists of strings of names of far-awav places, while the human body is an unknown territory ; a grammar which boggles over parts of speech and leaves the great books which humanity has pro-

duced to be known only to the student and the- leisured. We need to see that the various capacities of the growing mind shall not be compelled to keep uniform step to the tune of an overloaded and frequently ridiculous syllabus. And, above all, the children must be prepared so that they shall be lit to urdertake wisely and well their future duties towards the next generation. In doing so. we need especially to hold before the bovs a higher standard of morality than, alas, we women often do. W c have no right to acqiliese in the idea that the masculine nature needs certain liberties, or is unable to conform to the same standard that* we expect of our girls. So l«>ng as we do acquiese in that idea, so long will nun maintain it and live down to it ; it is for us to raise the white standard ol a higher and an equal morality, and to demand that our boys and men shall live up to it. Thirdly,

W II AT OF THE POSITION OF WOMEN—

aye, and men too —in the industrial world ? For women, equal pay for equal work ; healthy working surroundings, properly limited hours oi labour, an«i prohibition ol forms <>r conditions of labour that will prevent the proper discharge of the possible duties of motherhood. 1 do not subscribe to the theory that all restrictions upon the employment of women should be swept away. I believe that in its own interests the community might well impose more restrictions than .ire even in force or regarded as necessary. And here let me say that stricter enforcement of the- conditions already contained in our Shops and Factories Acts for ensuring the health of workers is necessary. In too many cases these provisions are practically set aside or rendered useless through the greed and carelessness of eiiiploverx or landlords. There is not nearly enough inspection of working premises and conditions, and workers, espcciailv more women, for the protection of our women especially more women inspectors are urgently needed. These remarks will apply it* many cases also to the conditions in der which our husbands or sons work, and we are equally interested in their welfare.

Following on what I have just said, I come to the fourth point, that we women need to take a keener interest and a more active

part in the government whether local <>r central of the country. We boast of having had

THE VOTK VKARS HKFOKK ANY OTHER COUNTRY

conceded that right to its women, and we recount with pride the alterations of tin - laws with regard to women and children that have since been achieved. Hut how much remains to be done nay, how much more might we alreadv have achieved had we but made the fullest use of our opportunities ! In such matters as taking our share in the branches of local government th.it are now open to us. we are still lagging far behii d even countries whose women do not possess the parliamentary vote. Our school committees and education boards arc practically without exception masculine, although more than 50 per cent, of the teachers who work under their control arc women ; 011 our hospital and charitable aid boards it is the exception rather than the rule to find any women numbers, though that is work in which women’s hands and hearts are badly needed ; 0111 town councils again are exclusively masculine, though surely the municipal home, equally with the individual home, needs the supervision ol women, foi order, for cleanliness, lor beautv, tor economy. In

manv cases our cities are marvels of ugliness, full of insanitary conditions, ol old buildings that should be* destroyed, ot waste places that should be made beautiful, of uglv sights that should be done a wav with. It is said ot the ideal citv that tile streets shall be full of bovs ami girls playing in the midst of it. but we must confess with shame that the streets ol our cities archill ol sights and sounds calculated to produce tin- worst impressions upon the plastic minds of our children. And were women to take their proper place in local government, we might more quickly achieve needed extensions of the sphere of public* control over food supplies and other matters that immediately concern the public* health.

And—last of what I shall mention now for women generally we want to sweep away the one-sided and unjust restrictions that man lias made for women, the dual standard of morality, the unequal rights in divorce, the whole fabric of the loolish ideas that arc nominally maintained for the protection

of women and society, but which arc really the worst enemies of both. We want to see woman free to take her stand by man's side, his equal partner in alt that pertains to life, joiP’ng her heart and intuition to his intellect and reason. working together freely for the development of themselves, the the community, and the race. And to help in this wav we women need to stand for the present shoulder to shoulder better th in we have in tile past. We need to cultivate the sense of sc\ solidarity ; to abandon petty spites end jealousies between ourselves: *o cast away the cruel harshness * hat oppresses the poorer or weabei members of our sex ; to look on the temptations, the struggles the failures and successes of our sisters with a loving sympathy and a willingness to he-lp that is unfortunately too often lackit g now. \Ye do not need in this to cultivate any sense of sex antagonism towards man, whose blindness has made him his own worst enemy, but we do need to keep such a standard ol thought and conduct both lor our own sex and for man as shall help to do awav with some ol the obstacles that mankind has placed »n tlte wav of its own upward progress.