THE WOMEN OF FRANCE.

Taihape Daily Times, 14 January 1918, Page 4

THE WOMEN OF FRANCE.

Writes a Manaia (near Hawera) soldier from France: I have read somewhere or have been told of the hard tasks that the women of the Taranaki cow district perform. But their lives are a luxury of rest and ease compared to the hard lives of those French girls and women. Now Zealand women should come out here to learn what hard work means. To m e it is repugnant, and the tendency must be to coarsen and produce a hard fibre. Though in actual fact it does not appear to, if one may judge from the conversation and manners of these women. You will see them loading and carting manure, grooming and stabling horses, cutting and loading wood, working chaff-cutters and wood pulpers, the latter especially very laborious work, carrying heavy loads of mangolds on a yoke across the shoulders, just as Chinese vegetable sellers do, and similar heavy work. And their hours are from Sawn till dark Nor is this because it Is waj time. I am told it is Th*§ir normal work. And as there is no Sunday in the sense that we regard it, theirs is a seven days' working week.