The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. FRIDAY, JULY 22, 1927. DOLES FOR DESERTED WIVES

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 103, 22 July 1927, Page 8

The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. FRIDAY, JULY 22, 1927. DOLES FOR DESERTED WIVES

IT was natural that the policy of Agag should have actuated * our legislators in their discussion of a question suggesting an extension of the State’s family allowance dole to deserted wives. The subject is delicate enough to demand prudence on the part of politicians. There are many deserted wives nowadays in every electorate.

The Minister in Charge of Pensions obviously wanted to be firm about it,, but the difficulties with which the question is surrounded urged him to exercise a kind of Conservative chivalry. Thus the Hon. G. J. Anderson explained that, while the Government entertained no intention at present to amend the Family Allowances Act to enable deserted wives, who are supporting families, to receive the benefit of the enactment, investigations were being made as to the practicability of making provision in another direction for assisting these women and children. It was hardly necessary to waste the time of Parliament.in discussing forensically and facetiously the unanswerable question of whether or not some men were justified in leaving their wives. Everybody knows that many wives , are fortunate in not being deserted, but against that satirical argument it can be contended also as an incontestable fact that, if economic conditions were more generous to women and wages more equitable, there would be an epidemic of husband-desertion. But the ethical side of marital duty may be left to the contemplative minds of philosophers and those anthropologists whom, as Doun Byrne has noted, one never meets at the races. The politician and the taxpayer are much more concerned with the. economic side of a serious subject. It would be easy for legislators to go astray in an attempt to extend the dole under the Family Allowances Act to the deserted wives and children of cowardly scoundrels. A bitter lesson has been jSrovided by the parent Legislature in the United Kingdom. Since the British politicians first began their stupid policy of providing allowances for unemployed men and women and their distressed dependants, the colo.ssal sum of £500,000,000 has been spent on relief within a lustrum. Even a politician might well realise now that if the money had been devoted to the expansion of British industry, the development of electric power, and to other innumerable Rational works, there would have been no unemployment problem and no disgraceful social distress. Of course, something must be done by Parliament to cope with the increasing curse of wife-desertion. Consider the extent of it. in Auckland and its consequences: The Hospital and Charitable Aid Board has to grant relief to about six hundred dependants of close on 180 wife-deserters; then hospital treatment also has to be given free because there is no hope at all of collecting the fees. The cost to the ratepayers is £B,OOO a year, on a conservative estimate. The first thing Parliament should do is to make the punishment fit the crime, and compel the scoundrels to work like galley slaves for the maintenance of their dependants. A btate dole merely would encourage callous cowards to run away from duty.

MARRIED WOMEN & UNEMPLOYMENT

IX recent years there lias been frequently-recurring controversy I concerning the employment of women in the professions and business, and particularly in regard to the vexed position of the status of married women in industry. There are two sides to this question, of course; otherwise it could not be controversial. English newspaper correspondents have expressed widely divergent views as to “the proper place” for the married woman. Largely, it seems, her “proper place” depends upon circumstances, and these circumstances have been created by woman’s invasion of spheres of industrial activity formerly considered as belonging solely to men. Opinions differ even among women. In a controversy conducted on its principal page by a great London newspaper, it was to be noted that women in affluent or easy circumstances were emphatic that women had a right to please themselves and and superintending the order of her husband’s house. Others, of the largely-growing class which is ambitious for “careers,” were emphatic that women had a right to please themselves and be beholden to no man; that a “career” was above the attractions of home, husband and children. Less dogmatic were those who wrote of their experiences as women who had been forced by economic circumstances to go out into the world and struggle in competition with men to earn their livings. But these people mostly steered clear of the chief point in dispute, which is whether a woman whose husband’s income, salary or wages is sufficient to maintain her in her station in life should go out and compete in the market of employment with men, or with other women who have to work outside the home through sheer necessity. And that is the question which is just now vexing New Zealand, along with other countries. A case in point is that of married woman teachers. To the average mind, the decision of the Auckland Education Board was a wise one. The board took a referendum of teachers, and the vote indicated, by a large majority that the employment of married women teachers should be at the discretion of education boards. A similar referendum is to be taken among the teachers of the Wellington district. Where an Arbitration Court fixes wages, and employers beyond the scope of the Court pay salaries, based on an estimate of the cost of living for a man, wife and children, it does not seem a fair thing that married women, whose husbands ought to be maintaining them, should be encouraged to compete with those whose circumstances are necessitous. There are women employed in the schools, in offices, and in shops, whose husbands are able to support them. It is not a desirable condition of affairs; and, unfortunately, it appears to be a growing one. Under such a social system, the home in the real sense is a minor instead of the main chord of life. And the home of the married woman worker is too often childless. The effect of such a condition upon the future of the country need not be stressed.