SIGNS OF THE TIMES.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1861, 22 September 1913, Page 11

SIGNS OF THE TIMES.

THINGS TO NOTE IN THE SOCIAL LIFE OF TO-DAY.

CHANGING WOMEN,

"It is no light frivolity , which is changing womon," says tho "l'all Mall." "Thoy are changing in consonance with a. general change which is affecting the world, and which is rendering their old sheltered sphere of existence no longer available for them —at any rate, in't-Jiia country and throughout the AngloSaxon world. Tlioir mere excess of numbers is sufficient to account for the change, though there are other causes, economic and social, which operate in the same direction.

YOUNG MEN NOT WANTED. "An unfortunate trend in our citieß to-day is the increasing social segregation of young women from young men," says the "Boston Congregationalist." "William Knowles Cooper, general secretary of tho Washington Y.M.C.A., says that it is especially noticeable in Washington, where a large number of unmarried young people of both sexes are employed in the Government service.

"Formerly, when the young ladies wore getting up a, social affair it was deemed necessary to have some young men inoluded. But now the young ladies find that they can got along by themselves and do so. The young men pursue a similar course, and thus they rarely como together in the normal, natural, wholesome way that they should do. One result is late marriage or no marriage at all. Here is a problem more closely related to tho Bocial evil than tho minimum wage."

1,800,000 COUPLES WITHOUT OFFSPRING. "The proposal to tax unproductive members of tho community, that is to say, celibates and childless couples, promises, if carried into effect, to bo a welcome addition to tho revenue of a State groaning under the burden of militarism," says the Paris correspondent of the "Daily News." "Dr. Jacques Bertillon, the statistical expert, says that there ar4 in Franco at tile present time 1,350,000 celibates, 1,800,000 families without children, 2,650,000 families with two children, and 2j400,000 families with only one child. "It is proposed to fix tho 'compulsory' family at three children and to tax every citizen, who has reached tho ago of forty-five without having three children living, or who reached the ago of twenty-one. The tax is to be 30 franco (£1 45.) per child falling short of the minimum of three. This tax would, it is calculated, yield about 20 millions sterling annually to the State."

HALF HIS COMFORrS. A provincial professional mau of near forty, with an incoino of £500 a year, declared himself an unwilling bachelor because of tho incapacity of the plea-sure-loving, undomesticated modem wo-, man for tlio responsibilities of marriage and tho impossibility of finding ono of "tbo good old-fashioned kind" willing to share his comparative poverty Miss Cicely Hamilton, tbo playwright, says in the "Daily Mail 1 ' that "if ho "is a bacholor it is not because .thero are no women who can run his liouso economically, but because, a prey to habit, he never thinks of looking for a wife outsido a certain set; a prey to the timidity' of middle life, he shrinks from tak ing risks. _ .

"Let no one pity him; in his heart he exalts his comforts above domestic joys, and ho has no right to growl because his income does not run to both. If he really desired domestio. joys he would halvo his comforts and endeavour to extend his acquaintance among fhat section of the feminine oommunity which travels third-class and has never been to Asoot in its life. . . . By this means ho oould easilv obtain a wife-j----and oocupy himself, for the rest of his days, in oriticising the clothes that she bought at the sales in the suburbs."

Why Are Villages Sleepy?

"An American Professor, has reoently propounded the question, Why is Chester Sleepy H 1 and answered it by a referonco to the tablets placed in the Cathedral to the memory of the young men killed in the South African War.

"Mr. Allan Fea's new book, 'Quiet Roads and Sleepy Villages' (Eveleigh Nash), has moved us to ask a similar question," says tho "Nation." "Why are the villages sleepy? Why are they stagnant, lifeless places of at most an antiquarian interest, where the pieturosquo tourist, like Mr. Fea, wanders about looking, often in vain, for the church-key? Thore can be no ..doubt of the answer. It .is because the best young men all go away. There is no inducement for them to remain. The couutryside is continually being drained of its best blood."

The English Breakfast. "In England tho breakfast custom is not only an enormous waste of time, but it has other inconveniences. • On the Continent, with coffeo and rolls served in one's bedroom, one can think out one's plans, dress in comfort, and be ready for the day's work or the day's pleasure," says Mr. G. It. Sims. , "The English family breakfast and' the English hotel breakfast to which you have to sit down fully arrayed to have many especially to tho fair, who devote a considerable amount of time .to the gentle art of personal adornment. It is the substantial nature of ,the British breakfast that is the trouble. There is a difficulty about serving- a meal which consists of mutton chops, haddocks, sausages, fried solos,. kidneys, eggs and bacon, and marmalade in a bedroom.

'."There is no difficulty in serving the 'cafe complet', or 'the complet,'. as it is served on the Continent, but serving a solid English breakfast in a bedroom is another pair of shoes, _ English people on the Continent' readily fall in with tho Continental custom, and like it. Btit directly they return to England the first fragrant whiff of eggs and bacon in the cooking rovives the morning's appetite of tho Briton."

Provincial Contempt for London. "Thore is somothing indeed arrogant and contemptuous in their manner of departure which adds to the London man's resentment," says "Chambers's Journal," of some provincial visitors. "Tho day visitors seom glad that they aro going home. "They laugh and shout; they throw paper bags about the streets, forgetting th:\t we shall havo to pick them up afterwards; they jostle about and disregard the riilo about keeping to the right; they ask questions familiar way, and aro not timid of suggesting their ignorance, as the metropolitan is; they even convey the impression that they know nothing of London, that they want to know nothing of it save such information as will answer tho needs of the moment, and that they really care nothing whatever about the king city of the world.

"To tir?m Wigan and Blackburn, Sunderland and Hartlepool, Sheffield and Todmorden, aro fairer, better, more answerable places. They aro joyful to be returning to them, and they shout and sing as they take their night excursion train back to the north."

Demand for Women Surgeons. Seven women students who have passed tlio qualifying examinations were fast week admitted members of the Royal College of Surgeons. ' AVitb regard to these successes a woman dootor said to the "Mail";

"Greatly as the number of women doctors lias increased in rceent years the supply falls considerably short of tho demand, which has grown appreciably. The reason is that so many women patients prefer to he treated by members of their own sex. The number of lady doctors has doubled in the last ten years."

What the City Temple Teachcs. "Already the New Theology is at work convincing the world of sinlessness and changing the message of tho Gospel from an ultimatum —"It is tho last time!' —into a Labour Party pamphlet. And what the City Temple teaches today is almost certainly what Nonconformity generally will teach to-morrow, if it is not doing so already," says the "Church Times."

The Triumphant Lunatlps. "Surely 13ank Holiday is the right time for announcing that throe lunatics of the East Sussex County Asylum have won a £100 prize in a competition promoted by a London weekly newspaper," says the "Daily News."

"If the lunatics of Sussex are tho most intelligent of the readers of this London weekly, what must be tho brain power of the sane men of Sussex —or of tho sane readers of that paper 1 Wo must, indeed, be grateful for forty years of compulsory education reinforced by a decado of 'competitions.' "