Penalising Marriage.

Manawatu Herald, 6 September 1904, Page 3

Penalising Marriage.

It is rather amusing, apropos of a recent agitation, to note the way in which the New South Wales Government is penalising married candidates for employment in the public service. The Sydney Daily Telegraph has drawn attention to the fact that in advertising for applicants for a number of vacant positions in the pnblic service ot New South Wales, the Public Service Board has, in every case in which adults are invited to apply, expressly notified that all candidates for employment must be unmarried. Not only are the teachers for country schools required to be unmarried, but the dairy instructor for the Hawkesbury Agricultural College, 8t a salary of £2OO per annum, with quarters, must also be a single man as must the junior resident medical officer at the Coast Hospital, Little Bay, whose position is classified at £BSO per annum, with quarters. Says our contemporary : “ A. Government that applies the principal of preference to celibates enforces a system which spells national weakness and not national strength. It is not denied that the State, like any

Other employer, is enttiled to demand of its employees that their private lives shall be decent and honest. Further than that the State is not entitled to go in its supervision of the individual. It is not entitled to rob any woman of a husband, or any man of the opportunity of living that life which makes him a good citizen in the highest and fullest meaning of the word.”