MODERN HOUSE-WIFE

Hokitika Guardian, 19 March 1926, Page 4

MODERN HOUSE-WIFE

IS SHE SLACKING? READY-MADE IN CLOTHES AND FOOD. AUCKLAND. .March 15. Arc modern housewives slacking is a question prompted by the great increase of shops purveying the toadymade, whether it is clothes or food. Everywhere the “home-made” cake shop' nourishes, and establishments with cooked meats, ham or preserves. There are firms to undertake that husband’s horror called spring cleaning, and the week’s laundry goes to the hag-wash. A sewing machine is unknown in many modern homes, where “ready-mades” have taken the place of home dressmakers. Twenty years ago “ready-made was more or less a term of contempt.

‘‘.Ready-mades” were the last resort of the shiftless and thriftless. “Laboursaving” was practically unknown. Hei labour was the last thing the oust housewife saved. Her home, husband ami children were the only things in life that mattered. For them she toiled from dawn to dark. To-day “readymade” and “labour-saving” lie as sweetly on woman’s tongue as the most blessed of till words. They find their expressions in drapers shops, in the handy little tish-and-ehips emporium iust round the corner, in the “homemade” pie and cake shop, in great dishes of expensive and neatly sliced ham and Ibccf that smile from the pork butcher’s plate-glass windows, in the carpet cleaning factory window, the washing partnership, the darning and mending bureau. I here is piacticall.v no nook nor cranny of the domestic realm which labour stivers have l lelt itu. conq tiered. THE ORDER OF THE SLAVE. Low will regret the passing of the old order of the slave, which in years gone by was considered the right and litling insignia, of womanhood. Gone and well ridden are the days when woman rose and shovelled coal to heat Lhe range to cook the family breakfast. Gone the days when every inch of her carpets had to lie swept with a hand broom and beaten with a prop on the clothes line. The song ol the tub still sounds in the majority of Auckland’s households on Monday mornings, hut every year sees an increase in the family laundering business, while the family cooking of to-day is little more than a matter of one fry-pan and a handful of small aluminium. saucepans. All this reduction of labour gives the modern housewife more tune to call her own than ever she had before, and yet if you ask one of these modern ladies how she manages to fill in her day she will repsond with a surprised stare and sav she is so frantically flwsy (hat she literally lm.s not one moment to spare. Pressed tor details she will talk impressively of appointments in town, hair-trims, new curtains, tennis and golf, cakes for Wednesday's bridge afternoon, club lectures, jam-making and other varied duties. WHERE SHE EXCELS.

And there is no doubt about her duties, either, but they tire not such soul-deafening duties as they used to ho. The modern housewife is a good cook. She excels in dainty and expensive* morsels that melt like snow Before the onrush of appreciative guests, hut she is not strong on the plain buns, suet dumplings and other homely fare on which site hersell cut her second leetli. In spite of the enormous sale of very excellent inetorymado jams and preserves she is undoubtedly good in this branch of the housewifely art. A dealer in a southern city recently voiced a hitter plaint that women were not buying his pots

a’Pil pans, that they bought all their junta and preserved fruits ready made. This is not the experience of Auckland shopmen. They speak up well lor local housewives and sav that given a

good fruit season and cheap sugar the ladies are a- good at the jam-making, or even better, than their grandmothers, and in proof of it, one was hogged to take the word of a leading dealer that otic firm of Auckland indent agents had placed orders for no fewer than 1000 preserving pans last month, while preserving bottles and jam pars had almost disappeared ill housewives’ recent raids. THE OTHER STDE OF THE PICTURE.

It was left for a veteran tradesman, however, to cast a shadow on the happy picture which the pots and pans merchant, had conjured up. “Are ■ mi- housewives slacking?” lie repeated. “Yes, I should say they are. If net. what’s (lie meaning of all these hundreds of little pork pie and iish ami chip shons springing up all over Auckland Mho supports them? What are fathers getting for their tea at night? What is the first thing a child of today remembers seeing in his mother’s hand? A P,iblo? No. a trypan. Frypans morning, noon and night, and when they run out of dripping they rush, off to the li.sli and chips shop. Wry nice and convenient, hut you just wait and see what kind of digestions these youngsters of the present day are going to develop in twenty of thirty years’ time. As for the husbands. . . ." ,He shook his head mournfully. Things looked black for the husbands. He may, of course, have (been a pessimist. It is a. very wonderful ago with some very wonderful people in it. Von can get almost anything in the. world to-day ready-made or made to measure, hut there is just one thing that no wizard can ever produce, and that is ready-made homes. The world is deluged with labour-sav-ing devices, Imt none of them will over supplant the oldest and must honourable form of work to which woman ever turned her hand, that ol making a home, unless of course the old ideals and traditions are indeed being scrapped and the homemakers and housewives are slacking.