Woman's Work & Ways

Maoriland Worker, Volume I, Issue 8, 20 April 1911, Page 5

Woman's Work & Ways

(Collated by Maggie May.) Six thousand pounds A\ere subscribed at a meeting in the London Albert Hall, of the Women's Social and Political Union, towards obtaining the suffrage for women. Miss Vida Goldstein of Melbourne said that Australia sympathised with the militant policy of the union. The women of Australia had suffered severely from bad education and industrial conditions, and their one main idea in demanding the AA-as to save their children from a similar fate. Women's Industria! Freedom. Those Avho advocate the industrial freedom of women (Avrites Aruthur Henderson in the "People's Journal"), are often denounced as reactionaries, because the repeal of IaAA-s AA'hich restrict the period of employment of females Avoukl at once expose that sex to the caprice and selfishness of unscrupulous employers. The cheapness of Avomen labour to-day is largely due to the inability of the individual to resist the demands of manufacturers and others Avho prosper on this form of parasitism. The exaction is A\*orst Avhere employment takes place at home; but there, of couse, existing statutes have no application unless the individual's effort is supplemented by the help of others. When this condition obtains the individual efiters another category, becoming often, both sweater and SAveated. Thus an exchange : —In introducing a J_.abour cookery book to a hungry Avorld Mrs. Ramsay Macdonald says : — One can imagine _uite a political influence growing up in the kitchen as a result of its publication. And there is something: in the idea. A cookery book that Avould enable us to put a little ginger into some of our Labour politicians, and provide brainless electors Avith food for thought, AA r ould be a notable addition to gastronomic literature. Some interesting figures are given in Foreign Labour Statistics, a publication just issued by the British Board of Trade. It seems that fifty-five persons in every hundred in the United Kingdom are "idle." In Germany the figure is fifty-four, in France fortynine, and in the United States sixtytwo. Of course, these include children, the aged, and women AA r ho are facetiously called idle because they happen to be married and Avho merely frivol away their time taking care of a husband and nine children.