MEN GIVE CLOTHES COUPONS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 24, 4 March 1942, Page 8

MEN GIVE CLOTHES COUPONS

Englishmen seem to be performing unheralded and unsung", another of those little acts of self-sacrifice that entitle us—in moments of selfsatisfaction —to consider ourselves chivalrous people. For, all over the country, they are said to be giving up. some of their clothes coupons to their womenfolk. They are surrendering their reputation of being the world's best-dressed men in order that their wives and daughters may not acquire that of being the world's worst-dressed women. The discovery has been made by Mr T. Harrison, who is chief of a voluntary investigating bureau known as Mass Observation, which has just published the first British survey made on the question of ■ clothes rationing. Mr Harrison's •team of questioners unloosed itself on the streets of Bolton, Worcester and Central London, stopped likelylooking passers by, and hurled its queries at them. One thing it found out Avas that three times as many women as men disapprove of having their , clothes rationed. Another fact that emerged was a genera) determination on the'part of both sexes not to cut down their purchases el' shoes. P-ople are ready, even anxious, to dispense with evening dress. They can bring themselves, though reluctantly, to contemplate doing without stockings. But further than that they will not go. The British people, whatever blows of -fortune may assail them, are determined to keep standing on their feet; and those feet will continue to he in a great variety of shoes.