OUR PROGRESSIVE SISTERS. Matrimony on a Strictly Business Basis.

Free Lance, Volume IV, Issue 168, 19 September 1903, Page 8

OUR PROGRESSIVE SISTERS. Matrimony on a Strictly Business Basis.

THE Notional Council of Women, who have been threshing out some things at New Plymouth la.tely, have resolved that, as woman is now on an equality with man, she should be paid for her services as wife and mother. Had a mere man suggested this rather sordid idea of reducing matrimony and maternity to a financial contract, he would probably have been hotly chased with lance-like letters by all the emancipated ladies of the land. The faot that little lots of women, calling themselves all sorts of councils and things, keep popping up here, there, and everywhere in New Zealand, is an indication that there is some sort of tenacity m their methods, and that these little lots iiv tend, if possible, to establish matrimony on a strictly business basis. ♦ * * The National Council want to know why every other service to the community should be recognised as having an assessable value except that of wife and mother. Why, plainly, doesn't the brute male, having bought a wife at a price, laid down by statute), pay her so much per head per child during married life? Of course, the brutal male would have, before being brought to see this economic proposal in its just light, to have torn from his mind all stupid, old-fashioned ideas of mutual trust, mutual love, and community of interest. ♦ * * The much-discussed birth-rate question, under the delightful conditions subscribed to by the Council ladies, would be settled out of hand. Each child would be bought by the brutal male, and paid for under statute law. The prospect is too bright and beautiful for mere word description. The ladies, who are hurt because they do not receive a stipulated wage for their work as wives and mothers, have the remedy for all this in thear own bands. They need not marry. • • * If a servant (with whom they class themselves by this "economic" idea) doesn't care for tlje wages attached to a situation, she doesn't take the situation. One cajuaot help thinking that the earnest women of these Councils and small bodies of advanced propagandists are just a wee bit soured, from some cause or other. The average woman one meets, who is, of course, "unenlightened," does not talk about payment for maternity of of "economic independence," while she can get all she desires within reason, provided that the average mutual trust exists between her and her husband. * * ♦ It is not fair, however, to call the "councillors" the shrieking sisterhood, for, oven if they do raise their voices a trifle hysterically, they don't really hurt. Their following is small, and they call attention only to their discontent. The average masculine mind does not, as these councillors opine, conceive woman to be a mere annexe of man. He would be a very foolish man who would go in for tne annexation of a lady who subscribed to the National Council theory that woman and her childre should have a market value.