CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 49, 7 June 1910, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

ADVANCE, TARANAKI! The Winter Show opens to-morrow. No person and no community of persons can tell what the effect of a certain line of conduct will ibc until they experiment. The show is an experiment, and there is no doubt in the minds of its wellwishers that it will be a success. The public is slow to initiate, and in every case the enthusiasts are responsible for the interest aroused in any definite scheme of progress. The president of the Society, and those associated with him, have been largely instrumental in creating and keeping up the interest necessary to maike the show a success, and the ipublic have responded in a worthy manner. Personal work counts greatly in such a scheme, and unquestionably the appeals that have been made to* the individual have been the means of assuring a large collection of exhibits. The function is to take place at the Drillshed, while a .portion of the adjacent street will be utilised for the overflow exhibits. Naturally enough, Taranalri's chief concern is dairying and dairy produce, and therefore' exhibitors will specialise in these (branches of the staple industry. The dairy industry is being revolutionised by the "milking-machine, and several varieties of these labor-saving appliances will be shown. There will be an exceptionally large exhibit of dairy produce, and j no doubt these particular exhibits will claim a large share of attention. But apart from Taranaki specialities, the sections showing what can be done on the farm and garden will ibe or especial value as demonstrating the fertility of the soil and the resource of the population. The cleverness of the housewife and her children is an important factor in the progress of the .State, and, therefore, the home sections' and the exhibits of work by technical school scholars must prove of no little benefit to the community. The show will be open for four days, and excursion trains will run in order to afford outside people an opportunity of seeing it. If the weather is'propitious, there can be no doubt that the initiatory Winter Show will be a great success, and should spur exhibitors to even greater efforts in the way of further demonstrations of their skill and progress in the future.

MEN'S CLOTHES. The other day we read somewhere that a man took twice as long to dress for an evening function as a woman, and that he only then succeeded in making himself look exactly like every other man in the gathering, including the waiters. Then we were struck with a man's fashion note to the effect that man had at last epened his eyes to the fact that he was. losing a lot of joy by allowing women to have the monopoly of bright colors. As a matter of calm fact, if a man were to walk down Devonstreet wearing the variety of colors that any woman can indulge in with pleasurable effect, he would be regarded as of weak mind. And yet this has not always been so, and dulness of male garb is by no means universal. The men of the 'world's armies are gayer in attire than even the most extravagant woman, and one presumes that the dominancy of the military has gradually made gay clothes their special monopoly. The only violence of color permitted to an ordinary civilian is per waistcoat, per tie, or per boot. He is not even allowed to wear pink boots, hut he may sport the most bilious of yellows without particular offence. His wife may be permitted to indulge in violet shoes if she wishes, but if he transgressed in this way he would be hounded from Beer>he'ba to Dan. In the old days when life was less strenuous, men were permitted to exercise their taste for colors by wearing them, but it is noticeable that the men who wore the gladdest clothes were those who had no occasion to work. Then, again, men wore the

clothes of their calling, and were giddy in the matter of colors according to the pocket. On a bright spring morning the earth is made very glad by the sudden appearance of the summer blouse and the white dresses of bur sisters. It pleases us, this sudden compliment to nature's good humor. But we men toil down to office or workshop in the same ;blues and blacks, and generally wear fifteen pounds of clothes whether the thermometer stands at 48 or 100. There is no reason why we should not weiu" white trousers and pink waistcoats, with a purple feather in our straw hats, if clothes make women 'beautiful, why should not men be beautiful, too? As long as the trouser endures man's clothes must be ugly. Man's angular form is not beautified by the common cloth cylinders of civilisation. A famous person once wrote that the most abominable /portion of a man's attire was a white starched shirt, and he declared that he would never again wear a' garment that had been stiffened with white mud. The sedate city man who went to work wearing a scarlet shirt and no coat would be the butt of the town, but no one ever worries when a woman attends a function wearing, among other things, a vermilion blouse that weighs an ounce and a-lialf. The fact of it is that women don't care so much what other women think of their attire as men do of the opinion of their fellows. A woman will wear a "Chanticler" hat of the most wonderful kind with the utmost sangfroid, but the man who has to wear a mere "belttapper' or a cocked hat and feather for the first time wants to crawl under a hedge to hide. We fear that man will continue to be dully garbed, and that if gav attire for males should ever ibeeome .popular, it will be because women and not men take the question in hand. Women do not seem to realise how ugly ou,r garb is, and men only garb themselves in the prevailing way because of women. One does not notice many dress coats and things in bush canypt, for instance.