BABY’S CLOTHES MONEY SPENT ON FURNITURE

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 223, 9 December 1927, Page 9

BABY’S CLOTHES MONEY SPENT ON FURNITURE

CHILD ENDOWMENT SCHEME MUCH ABUSED By Cable.—Press Association. — Copyright. SYDNEY, Thursday. Before the Child Endowment Commission Dr. B. Morris, Director of Maternal and Baby Welfare, declared that extravagance pervaded the social atmosphere like a pathological miasma. He said the Government concession of free outfits of babies’ clothes was much abused. It frequently came under his notice that expensive furniture was purchased, instead of clothes j for the expected baby. : ° ne the principal factors, if not the main cause, of this reckless expenditure, was the time-payment system. They were all in the swim to a greater or lesser degree. The man on the basic wage could not afford anything but necessities, yet he was surrounded on all sides by others with hired, or partially paid-for, luxuries, and he was impelled to follow them by the time-payment inducements. The man higher up the scale, with an income of £SOO, tried to follow the pace set by the man with £I,OOO, and the latter to follow that of the man with £2,000. —A. and N.Z. PROPOSALS IN BRITAIN ABSTENTION EXPLAINED British Wireless—Press Assn.—Copyright RUGBY, Wednesday. The Minister of Labour, Sir Arthur Steel Maitland, was asked In the House of Commons whether, now that the German Government had ratified the International Labour Convention on maternity protection, he would expedite its ratification by the British Government. The Minister replied that the general reasons which led the British Government representatives at Washington in 1919 to abstain from voting for the adoption of the convention, which the British Government had yet to ratify, were that in the view of the Government the benefits provided under the Health Insurance scheme and other social services already in operation in Britain, were in accordance with the policy of the convention. No doubt these benefits were in some respects in advance of those embodied in the convention.—A. and N.Z.