FACTORY GIRLS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5352, 16 November 1928, Page 4

FACTORY GIRLS.

LIFE TOO MONOTONOUS. . L A NOVELIST’S VIEWS. Two things occupy tire minds of the majority of the four million girls between 14 and 23 who work in factories in London. They are: (1) Clothes and (2) boys. Mrs Blanco White, the novelist (daughter of the Hon. W. Pember Reeves and Mrs Reevqs), who makes this statement, say these girls and their boys constitute a tragic problem .which has to be tackled. Speaking ’qt the National Union of Societies for. Equal Citizenship Summer School, at Oxford, she said that to thejse factory girls there was no subject so vital as boys.

“These; boys in factories lead a far more varied life than .the girls,” said Mrs Blanco White. “The girls’ minds get deadened during the monotonous day’s work, and if their special boy goes off, preferring a, football match to tlheir company,' they, the fifteen and sixtqen-year-'old children, go home and break their hearts.

“If .their boys go off to another factory thqy go too, so that they caji cqme out at the same time and walk home with them. This is also the reason why it is extraordinarily difficult to persuade girls from their particular district and put them in better positions as domestic servants. In many ways it is the fault off the employer for nqt giving their girl employees work which they can "think about.” .

Describing the average factory girl to be seen coming out of any big factory, Mrs Blanco White said :—

“They all look like children. They are shoft, particularly in the leg, with pretty little faces, usually thick with paint and powder, while invariably this particular type off English bejauty is marred by some physical defect such as adenoids and bad tee ; th. They are; very smartly dressed in shoddy, cheap clothes, and they oply go out with their particular boys.

“The principal way of overcoming this tragic problem is a bette;r, wider and longer education fqr girls, which would broaden their minds, and! give them a more intelligent interest In the work they do. “Women,” she concluded, ’’are not supposed to mind monqtony to the extejnt that men do. What would dirive a man savage and turn him into a Communist will only deaden a girl nnd make 'her stupid.