GOOD OLD DAYS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 358, 20 October 1932, Page 6

GOOD OLD DAYS

WERE NOT SO GOOD THE MOAN OP THE PESSIMIST DISCOUNTED BY PLAIN FACTS. WORLD A LOT BETTER. The pesshri: t i-; t ■ L* v os | he lias shvayu " -i ilii'. ' is more cf him. "Things eouldn .-ossi'Gy be v.orse. They never HAVE been worse!" he ; moans. * ' Then he switehes on the eleetric , lamp over his chair and reads his lid newspaper, smoking his 10 for sixpence cigarettes, wxth his 3s 6d worth of soft felt siippers 011 his feet, while the radio murmurs Schubert gantly at him from five miles away. He's so uncomfortable! Business ! is bad. "Things couldn't ba worse." | Oh, for the good old days! Certainly business may be bad; stocks down, unemployment rife, the dole flourishing. But anyone who has lived to a reasonable age — the eminently reasonable age, say, of 60, realises that times could have been worse. Rich Men's Pleasures. If, by times, we mean social conditions — and soeial eonditions are created by economic eonditions. They can remember the time when tennis and golf were rieh men's games, because the average clerk or small tradesmen could not alford the necessary white trousers, racquets, club or playing fees, shoes, time off, or tennis balls.

Now every lad can afford the white trousers, and awards have seen to it that he has the time off. Just over 20 years ago there were no picture shows, no motor bikes, no motor buses to'take young people along pleasure's trail. If there had been all these things, the young people could not have afforded them. There were no cheap cars — no chance at all for the majority of people to ride in a car.

What They Missed. Oil lamps were the order of the day, or night, then. The result was the fefusal of parents to allow youngsters to "waste" the precious fuel by reading books at night. If they did read at night, the result was eyestrain, and in the daytime, mostly, there wasn't time to read. In summer there was no way of keeping food or human beings cool — no iee-chests, no electrie fans, no fast means of transport to beaches and the cooling waves. In those times, falsely called "ihe good old days," young people were not allowed to go away together for any such things as hiking trips. Endless difficulties were put in the way of natural companionship of boys and girls. The things that girls, except girls of wealth, missxl! Silk underclothing and stoekings, bath-salts, ilne soaps and perfumes, pretty shoes and hats, beauty aids of every sort. The average selection of middleclass underclothing on sale at a droper's 20 years ago would giv • •>ur earnest-miuded explorer a distnict shock. What Young Men Missed. The things that young men snis'od — good, cheap suits. that motor-' -ika or baby. car, golf and tennis, theatres the chance to becorne an aviator, the chance to drive speed cars on reeordbreaking trips, the chance to save up and travel if their thoughis hiciiueu in that direcaon. Young women, thirty years ago, in "the good old times," had littl* or no chance of making money in business. A few were cash giils in restaurants, many were governesses and nurses, there were some clerks, but they were distinctly discouraged. Music and art were accomplisliments — not professions, unless penury drove women into them. There were factory girls, of course, because women's labour was cheaper than men's, as it always had been. But such departments of business life as shoopkeeping on a larg i scale. advertising, journalism, secr-;tarial work, specialised schoolteaching, n.edicine, and law were unknown. These good old times are inspired by false reasoning — in fact, by no reasoning at all. We have been, and are, far Ixtter off than we were in the comfortless 1900's, if only in superficial ways.