A WIVES’ TRADE UNION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 1030, 23 November 1912, Page 4

A WIVES’ TRADE UNION.

Mr George Lansbury, M.P., io a recent article in a London newspaper, recommends the wives of working men to form themselves into a trades union with a view to securing some relief from the perpetual drudgery which at present fills their lives. He does not suggest that women should disobey St. Paul’s injunction and combine against their husbands, but that they should combine to place their work under better and more convenient conditions. A wives’ trade union, Mr Lansbury suggests, could compel the municipality to organise a supply of boiling water to reach home. Washing day could be completely reorganised by the provision for each group of houses of a model washhouse, with up to-date labour-saving machinery and drying horses, all put up by the municipality and to be used at the lowest fee consistent with business-like administration. Something might also be attempted, he considers, in the way of providing facilities for the recreation of women, and he suggests the reorganisation of working men’s clubs on lines which would make these institutions proper places to which a man could take his wife and daughters for an evening’s entertainment. Girls employed in shops and offices should te included in the union, and should be helped to demand before marriage conditions of life calculated to give women a chance of intelligent development. The question of wages for wives would also come within the scope of the union's activities. Men could be obliged to realise that househould work is as real work and as hard work as any other. Mr Lansbury admits that the time may not be ripe for a union such as he suggests, but he appeals to the mothers’ unions organised by various churches to quit the idle discussion of things that don’t really matter and discuss the actual grievances of working women.