'Merely Mary Ann'

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 19, 14 July 1911, Page 4

'Merely Mary Ann'

Mrs. Fisher and Mrs. McGowen walked in the suffragette procession #in London. Thfit is the only good thing wafted to us from the Punch-and-Judy Coronation show. And what a procession it was! Mrs. Drummond on horseback, like a modern Joan of Arc, leading 40,000 women walking seven abreast and 70 hands smashing out tho music of liberty 1 Sex equality is a grand thing. We shall never win to that perfect freedom which is called Socialism while one-half the human race is held to be by nature Inferior to the other half. Can free men be born of slave women ? * * * "When the poor give to the rich, the devil laughs." Benevenuto Cellini, the famous Italian goldsmith, quoted that proverb in his "Memoirs" over four hundred years ago. A class-con-scious truth like that lasts longer than

a love song or a walled city. The best of all gir-is \b tho girl who Cfttt "hold her own," like Isabel, in "Lavengro," and some Sydney waitresses can match her. "It was scones you said, wasn't it?" one enquired on Coronation day of a severe old party. "I told you scones as phun as I could speak," snapped he. "Your speech is not as plain as you are," quoth she. * * * Lift up your heads, you ever-suffer-ing women. N.S.W. Minister for Education has declared that he looks forwaid to the time when domestic servants will come to a house at a given time, do their eight hours and leave; and Mrs Dwyer, of the Women Workers' Union, has fixed the hours. A start will be made at 6.30 a.m., and an end at 7.15

p.m., with three half-hour spells for meals and two one-hour spells for smoke-ohs through the day. It is coming—that blessed day when the houseworker w r ill arrive with the dawn and leave with the dusk. But workmen's wives and sisters, who do all their own work, are not really interested in the hired help question. Until the co-operative kitchen comes the ceaseless round of household drudgery must go on for them. The future historian, sizing up this capitalistic age of ours, will write: "The last place from which slavery was abolished was the home' -x- ■* -XBernard Shaw's superman, Jack Tanner, is bossed by the suporwoman, Ann Whitefield. But the Sydney super-

woman gets left sometimes. There is a smart girl in a factory there who always talks of marriage to her new "boys." "Wasting my time flirting is no good to mc," she tells them. "I'm serious. I want to settle down and marry." No wedding bells have rung for her yet. Her "boys" arc always doing a bunk for home ana mother. We seem to still like our love-mak-ing in the primitive fashion, with man the hunter and woman the caught. * * *

Madame Curie is one of the glories of our sex. "Current literature," an American magazine, has collected some impressions of this famous woman. None of them are a strain on the admiration of a Labor woman. She has "starved, feasted, despaired, been haopy" like the rest of working mortals. But it is something new to learn that Madame Curio . addresses her

chemistry classes with the abandon of an iceberg. Her voice is low and even, her manner and aspect quite cold, and although she has long, graceful arms she never waves them, and she announces the most wonderful of developments with a matter-of-fact deliberation. Then the impressions go on to disclose that Madame has domestic virtues ■ —making the dresses for her two little girls and washing their clothes. Just here a Labor woman might offer a few words. "Lifo is criticism. The -nobler the life, the finer the criticism," says Coburn, and our fine criticism amounts to this—"Why should the discoverer of radium waste her time doing

a dressmaker or a washerwoman out of a job?" -:«- * * At the Industrial Court, Sydney, the other week objection was taken to the appointment of a woman on ihc Wages Board tor chemical workers. But cie the seaweed mvc{.: away by "the rising tide. A woman is to be nominated for the Tent and Tarpaulin Fmirnoycos' Union, and, under the new Industrial Bill, the Women Workers' Union and the White Workers' Union will send women representatives to their boards. Wages Boards are delusive institutions, of course, but why should men

have even the delusions all to themselves ? * * * It is only hobble intellects they want in London just now. Any woman wearing the hobble skirt was not allowed near the King and Queen during the Coronation ceremonies. So the .LordChamberlain announced, stating his reason at the "same time. It wasn't because it was an ugly fashion, but because the wearer of the hobble could not curtsey as etiquette demanded. Build a statue to ihc "hobble" after that'! It kept us straight, anvwaj*.

* * -XThis is not tho first time courts have interfered in dress matters. At the time of the French Revolution several German prince * forbade their male subjects to wear trousers. Trousers were, held to indicate revolutionary opinions. They are rather popular just now, but you look in vain for their dangerous political tendencies. *° * •* * Lady Harberton, the pioneer of tho divided skirt, died recently. Her idea was bloomers, the short divided skirt not unlike baggy trousers, and for 20 years, despite all opposition, she wore tho blooming bloomers. Women's skirts will evolve into something sensible by-and-bye. They are narrow at present, two yards round, just wide enough for a good stride. And they are short, and therefore healthy and clean, and very unlike the trailing skirt, with its load "of dust and l~rt. May we never strike that trail a ga i n. * * ■* From a New York magazine we've found out the lowest depths of misery a rich American girl can strike. This girl wasn't starving, she hadn't hecn robbed of her money, and she was clothed and in her right mind. She iply had to wear the same hat for the third time! Maby Axn Makebelieve.