Women’s Work in Many Spheres

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 194, 5 November 1927, Page 8

Women’s Work in Many Spheres

Vo. 10: Miss E. Melvilh

I have done, I have done from the conviction that it needed doing—that it had to be done.” Miss Ellen Melville needs no introduction to New Zealanders or to the world of women. Eighteen years as an independent practising solicitor, 14 years on the City Council, and but for that perverse human conservatism, the shrinking from the unknown, the fear of the next step, she might also have been a member of Parliament. Upon her has descended the mantle of leadership, and the Dominion looks to her as a spokeswoman for her sex. The law was an early ambition. Probably the taste was hereditary. At all events, she began her business career in the legal firm of Devore and Martin, and found in Mr. J. C. Martin a sterling champion of the feminist movement, which was then in embryo. In that atmosphere the seed of her own creed was sown. She found law to her liking, and, being an assiduous student of the reason for everything, became confidential secretary to Mr. Martin. For a long time she was

unwilling to set her ladder at the wall of examinations, but eventually met Miss Hemus, and the two pioneers began studies together. Women were an unknown quantity in the profession then. Miss Melville was the first to qualify, and the first to practise independently, nor have the years added greatly to their numbers, for they could still be counted on the fingers of one hand. “In all my years of practice, I must say this —that I have always met a never-failing courtesy arid openmindedness. Recently, out of curiosity, I went through lists of my clients, and I found that they consisted in almost equal numbers of women and men. . . . No, on the contrary, X think women have potentialities of the legal mind. They are much more logical than men, but the feminine mind is undeveloped." Legal ractice, and that passion for doing things that needed to be done, led Miss Melvillle to agree with a fellow-feminist one day to stand for the municipal elections in 1913, and with a band of women rallied round her they ran rings round the male candidates. Since then she has sat continuously on the council Overwork, says Miss Melville, is one of the chief causes of the retarded advance of the women in the Dominion. The ties of domestic life have not been outgrown by many women, whose home duties could be performed with economic advantage by women of lesser intelligence. If women are overworked, they are politically under-organised. They do not take the part they should on the national stage. Three times Miss Melville has stood as a Reformer, and knows something of the trials and ignorant prejudices which face a woman candidate. “When the party leaders get out of their heads the idea that the women will always take their politics from their menfolk, and realise that the greatest unexploited, unexplored political field in the country is the women’s vote, then they will be clamouring after women candidates. “Women have a natural aptitude for public speaking, though it has not been developed. They do not speak for the sake of hearing their own voices, as so many men do.” Prom a deep study of the psychology of politics, Miss Melville believes that the day is passing when women, unused to forming their own political views, will be content to have them moulded by men even more incapable of a correct judgment, j

“SEGUING A PUP ’’ The Minister of Labour is extremely annoyed because Mr. T, O. Bishop accused the Government of “selling a pup” to .the farmers over the matter of the Arbitration Court. Mr. Bishop says the expression was only figurative. So, it appears, is the proposed amendment to the Bill. “Selling a pup” is one of those extremely expressive terms that have been so useful of recent years in enriching the English language and embellishing the dwindling beauty of English literature. It is expressive of “putting it over,” “running a schlenter,” or gaining confidence by fraud, and is supposed to have originated from the clever practice of a man who owned a clever pup of aristocratic lineage. This man used to enter an hotel with his pup, and when the animal had been duly admired by persons whose love of dogs was accentuated by alcohol, he would tell a hard-up story, and offer to sell this skinful of pedigree (“worth £2O or anybody’s money”) for £5. Finally, he would come down to a pound, and the dog would change hands —for an hour or so. What that dog didn’t know about escaping from new owners and returning in quick time to the dear old home wasn’t worth knowing.