HUSBAND SHORTAGE

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 1987, 7 June 1919, Page 4

HUSBAND SHORTAGE

1,500,000 WOMEN WHO CANNOT

MARRY.

The house famine, referred to in (he Daily Mail recently by clergymen as a deterrent to marriage because of the difficulty of setting-up homes, is not the sole cause of the falling-off in weddings. An authority states that there arc over a million and a-half women in England who will have no chance of marriage, for the reason that there is not sufficient men. In 1917 the ■surplus of single women over single men was 1,337,000.

Sir Robert Armstrong-Jones, M.D., told a Daily Mail representative that he did not think the estimate of 1,500,000 surplus of marriageable women over marriageable men was too high. A great number of girls realise that the chance of marriage is very small, and are getting employment with a view to establishing their future.

“Many of these women workers,” he said, “paid the penalty by .suffering from nervous troubles, and resorted to the use of sedatives. They smoke cigarettes, and some of them after their day’s woi'k even smoked cigars. At dances it is the fashion for a girl, to dance with the same partner all the evening; she does not get the chance of sorting the men out.

A great number of people are pref eulecl from marriage as tliey are unable to find houses. The flat system, although it favours marriages, does not favour families.-’’