LABOUR-SAVING MINDS.

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 38, 7 May 1927, Page 4

LABOUR-SAVING MINDS.

DOMESTIC EFFICIENCY. “I am afraid it is no use my taking home one of those labour-saving gadgets. My wife always says old ways are best, 9 * I heard a man say regretfully at the “Daily Mail” Ideal Home Exhibition, writes Ellen Wilkinson. M.P. in an English exchange. The saleswoman smiled. “Nowadays,” she remarked, “we grow women with labour-saving minds.”

The exhibition was one gigantic proof of the enfranchisement of the min'd of the modern woman. While she was expected to think of nothing outside her home, anything to save work was considered almost

wicked. Women’s time must be filled with household tasks to keep them out of mischief.

Now, when every modern woman is keenly interested in some job or another, perhaps engaged in running an organisation or even a constituency, she wants her kitchen to he at least as efficient as her office. * * * * *

The electrical stalls at Olympia will make every woman bombard her M.P. with demands that the new Electricity Board should bring the price of electricity within the reach of the most modest incomes. Wnat a lifetime of hard work could be saved by power installation in every home! There is a floor polisher that simply runs itself, needing only a guiding hand; there are vacunmcleaners that remove the disease-bear-ing dust, and a quite new’ electric iron with a little contrivance that turns off the current when the required hea: is obtained or when the ironer is called away. One stall showed an electric washer only lift square that would almost pay iV)r itself in laundry hills in two years, and with the drier makes home washing possible even in, a small flat.

If a vacuum cleaner or a carpetsweeper is out of the question, a woman who has suffered much f :om the old down-on-the-knees methods has invented a combined soft-and-carpet brush and a scoop with long handles. When the new Act forbidding the use of preservatives in food comes into operation the problem of ice will l:e a serious one for the hard-up home. The difficulty is met by an ice-less freezer which, with a cheap freezing preparation that can he bought from any chemist, will make ice from drinkingwater in 10 minutes, and. ice-creams quicker still. The way of the inventor is hard, hut an exhibition like this gives an opportunity for poor people w’ith bright ideas to introduce them to the public. At a stall devoted to the “new’ knitting a woman was showing an amazing simple and useful invention. A little celluloid ring costing only bd fits on the finger. It has a tension device which enables a quite inexperienced knitter to work complicated Fair Isle patterns in several colours as easily as she now knits in one. I was taught how to work it in a few momAs i turned from the stall I t hought regretfullv of certain times in the House of'Commons when there is nothing afoot but long, long speeches to till in time before the division bell rings. Now if one could . . . but the enfranchisement of women has not gone so far that one could even dare mention how usefully one's hands might be employed at such times.

EXCURSION TO MATIATIA

The launch Olive Rose, weather and other circumstances permitting, will leave the launch steps, opposite the Harbour Board office, for an excursion to Matiatia to-morrow. The time -and fares are advertised elsewhere in this i issue.