“ON LABOUR OF WOMEN”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 499, 31 October 1928, Page 14

“ON LABOUR OF WOMEN”

LIVINGS OF THE CLERGY CLERIC’S WIDOW PROTESTS “Not on your life is my living going to depend on the efforts of women who work themselves into a state of nervous exhaustion, getting up bazaars for the church expenses.” This, according to Mrs. Grace Fox, widow of the late Canon J. S. Fox, M.A., is what serious-minded young men say to themselves when they are -half-inclined to take holy ‘ orders. Writing from Otaki, Mrs. Fox speaks on the subject of the stipends of the clergy, discussing the subject from the viewpoint of a cleric’s wife. “Recently Archbishop Averill spoke in synod about the necessity for raising the incomes of his cldrgy if their spiritual energies were not to decline under the pressure of financial anxieties. May one who knows something of the inside of clerical life sav, through your columns, something about this matter.? It urgently needs saying, for the good of our Anglican Church,” says Mrs. Fox. NOT THE SMALLNESS “It is not the smallness of the clerical incomes that is a hindrance to the 'spiritual forces of our clergy. It is the way in which that income—part oi? the general expenses of each parish —is raised 'that is the trouble. It is this which “weighs down” the parson, and often his wife, and which makes serious-minded youths think twice.

Mrs. Fox continues: “1 myself once heard a cleric announce in church: •There will be a meeting of the ladies' guild on Friday. As this guild is the financial backbone of our Church, we hope for a full attendance.’ He only voiced the fact of the clergy’s financial dependence on the labours of women throughout this country. It is not good that any body of men should live, partly or wholly, on the earnings of women—and often tired women at that. Till this state of things is done away, clergy will feel harassed, and be di ■ verted from their proper work of the cure of souls, and their wives will be even more tired than the other guild members of whom they are the head. “Things will not be better till those who have ‘the cure of souls’ are level with those who have ‘the cure of bodies’ in status (not in money). Whoever heard of a doctor’s wife organising a bazaar, or sale of work, among her husband’s patients, ‘for the upkeep’ of his ‘general expenses’? The thing is unthinkable. It isn’t done! But we do it in the churches! AN EARNING ORDER “What the immediate remedy is I do not know. Some day it may dawn on the churches to make a new religious order of men and women devoted to earning money for the Church in ordinary business. Such an earning order would be welcomed by the commercial world. Its peaceful penetration of industry would be for good. It would make for true industrial peace, and bring pence to many a. woman’s life who at present finds little peace in ‘church work’ as it is to-day. “It would do more. It would set free the spiritual energies of the womanhood of our present guilds for other work. We might have time for prayer for the world’s needs. We might have time to inquire when politicians tell us we have turned the corner. Yes, but what is round the corner? We might even have time to find out, by hearty support of our own secondary industries, how to provide so much work for women and girls that none in this country need be in that peril which Albert Londres in ‘The Road to Buenos Ayres,’ says must, of economic necessity, come near. I quote from his last page: “ ‘As long as women cannot get “ ‘As long as girls are cold and hungry. “ ‘As long as they do not know where to go for a bed. “ ‘As long as women do not earn enough to allow themselves to be ill. “So that I write this, not only on behalf of harassed clerics, and tired clergymen’s wives and guild members but also on behalf of the equally impoi tant church work for the protection or girls and women—a protection, economic and industrial, about which Albert Londres (a Frenchman) ends his book with the emphatic words: ‘The Hd P of n ft^” ity iS ° UrS: we can not get