"With Concern"

NZ Truth, Issue 1174, 31 May 1928, Page 6

"With Concern "

WHAT is modern girl to the business man? Perhaps, m the language of economics, we can say: "That depends on the particular circumstances." At all events, the Featherston Chamber of Commerce makes a gentle glide from business to beauty, rising m an excess of fervid puritanism to "view with the greatest concern the growing immorality of the present day, and calls on all proprietors and custodians of halls to exercise the greatest care to ensure the safety of young girls."

"What is wrong with business generally, that a Chamber of Commerce (?) has to merge into a Chamber of Moral Uplift and Suppression of Vice? >

Short skirts,' drinking at dances and lack of parental control are among the things cited as causes of the present-day state of affairs.

Almost simultaneously with this statement, singularly enough, comes the utterance, from Auckland, of Miss Maude Royden, our notable visitor from the other side of the world. To her, short skirts are prettier and more hygienic than those of the Victorian era. Even further, she sees nothing wrong with an occasional cigarette.

In this' age. of modernism surely we ought to applaud the fact that our womenfolk are no longer bound by prudish, conventional ties, hampered by long, flowing skirts that sw.eep the streets, gather unhygienic refuse and are a libel to the intellect of femininity.

No pne can too strongly deprecate the habit of drinking at dances — a habit forced upon a certain class of girl without a will of her own, by an undesirable type of lounge lizard or larrikin, but chambers of commerce are rather flogging the dead horse by virtually converting themselves into chambers of horrors.

The moral standing of modern girl, compared with that of her ancestors, may be controversial, but' it cannot truthfully be said that the girl of to-day is one whit worse than her grandmother. The modes of civilization must change and the perfect understanding that exists between the younger people of both sexes of to-day is the direct result of modern education attuned to the needs of the age.

Anyway, unless the Feathei:ston Chamber of Commerce desires to change its title, and its activities, it would' do well to leave a subject that is not business to the particular bodies whose specific duty it is to attend to such questions.