AMONG OURSELVES.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 225, 22 September 1928, Page 18

AMONG OURSELVES.

A WEEKLY BUDGET.

(By CONSTANCE CLYDE.)

THE MIGRANT BOY.

In London the boy migration scheme is a failure! So announces a writer in the "Times" In spite of all that organisation and appeals have done, the Cockney has a rooted objection to leaving his native city,- He is of the Dr. Johnson school, believing that if a man cannot be happy and; successful in London he can be so nowhere. The Scotch in Glasgow are also Very alow in responding to the boy and girl'migration schemes, and in Wales there is the same difficulty. This may be due to the early age at which the lads are taken. The deep and often wise suspicion of the Celt comes to the surface. Boys who are: migrated are usually fatherless, though Hot motherless, and the. remaining parent cannot see why there should be such an insistence on immaturity. The "easier adaptability" of the young is to such relatives quite a mistake, unless the young are mere children. The parents fear, in fact, conscious or unconscious exploitation.

THE GIRL VOTER. English women psychologists put the modern girl voter into two classes. Beth classes, they consider, fail to take an interest in feminism. "The young woman voter who is keenly interested in politics usually joins a party in the early twenties. She may leave it later, but Usually to transfer her merely political allegiance. The second class, the young woman voter who is but mildly interested in politics or indifferent to" them, is not likely to turn to a movement (feminism) where she is confronted mainly by women with an outlook- she has never known. She has never known sex prejudice; she has worked with men all her life; she has never known of the movement which has given her the position she now enjoys; she is unconscious of feminism and its implications. To such young women—and they make the majority of the newly enfranchised voters—it will be a political party with its realism, with its obvious power, which will make the appeal." For this reason therefore, instead of the new voter add* Ing to the feminism of politics, she will rather subtract from it. She has never felt the chain. Admittedly the older woman sometimes feels a chain that isn't there I It is between the two extremes that progress lies.

WHAT IS FEMINISM? So asks a correspondent. And certainly there seems need for a definition when one will sometimes hear a New Zealand thinking woman indignantly deny the stigma of being a feminist. The true feminist is someone who has got quite away from the ideals set forth in that old poem about our "rights being to labour and to pray,* with, for our leisure moments, drying the. poor man's tear. The feminist is one who does not feci called to specialise in the first mentioned attribute, and who would prefer getting the poor man-employment to mopping him with a handkerchief. A feminist in many respects is a masculinlst. She notes with wonder the small sum allotted a separated wife with children to support, and with equal surprise the fact that a childless wife, who has kept away from her husband for twenty-five years, is legally awarded a rather large donation from the fortune which that husband has made, quite on his own. It seems a pleasant way to earn a living—Ay merely keeping away from someone for half a century—but it does ;not fall to the lot of us all! Feminism may be too ardent at times, but it can never uphold injustice to the other sex—great as have been past injustices to our own.

THE "COLONIAL** MASSEUSE. Massage, one of the few occupations in which a blind operator Is at an advantage, is also well suited to women. Many believe that they are superior to men in this occupation; this in spite of the fact that considerable more strength is needed than is apparent to the onlooker. "Warm, dry, well-padded hands" are a necessity, as well as a pleasant personality. Mel* bourn© has an admirable electric and massage department added to its hospital, and many young women are there employed. Comparatively speaking, to train for massage is not expensive. A girl so training usually gives one or two years' service to a general hospital, and this helps to her obtaining a position or private practice later. The furnishing of a room for patients will cost anything up to one hundred pounds.

When an epidemic is reported from any part of the world, it la the duty of tha International Pandemia Bureau in Paris to keep a record of its progress, and aleo to warn other countries, beside* recording all measures taken to prevent its spread. The head of this bureau is at present a woman, Dr. Esther Hilling, whose nomination was agreed to by all the Governments. The preparing of charts and the publishing of. various medical journals are also part Of her workv

AN INTERNATIONAL DUTY.