NOTES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 135, 16 September 1910, Page 6

NOTES.

American women are indigo t' ovej the terms of the will of 'a piomineTH, merchant named Dryenforth, wliieli was filed recently at Washington. Hie testator leave* his fortune, amount'ag vo . .n.-arly £120,000, 'to his only son; \.ho is not quite eighteen years or ag>\ The cause or .he women's anger is Hie outspoken denunciation of the. fair sex, which is the principal characteristic of the will. Mr. Dryenforth was known as a woman-hater, but his feelings were evidently so 'strong that he spent considerable time thinking out "safeguards" that would prevent his son's heritage falling into the hands of adventuresses. The most precise • instructions are yiven to the executors as to the disposal of the money, and the young n:a:i wiil find it difficult to exchange a word with a woman, without " jeopardising his inheritance. The testator explains the necessity for these precautions to his son, and says that . the executors "must guard him from the j wiles' of women, and inform him in a , sensible manner' on every suitable occasion of the artful and parasitical nature !■ of most of the unfortunate sex." The son is to,go to Oxford when he reaches . his majority. A well-known Venetian, lady, Signora Rosa Genoni, has formed a- league of Dress Reform—not "dress reform" in the' Anglo-Saxon meaning of the term, but in a Latin or to be more "precise, Venetian sense, as "reform" with them is a falling back on antique Venetian models. Signora Genoni began her campaign among her personal friends, they pledging themselves to bring in their acquaintances and so on. The members of i the league have not yet appeared in public in the "reform" gowns, but. they wear them in their own homes, and when receiving their friends. "Anything," she says, "is better than the straight - up aiid down sheaths of to-day. 1 We have figure* and we are riot ashamed of "them, and we feel.that we are doing ■ something to combat the ""modernising" | of our city, which is, unfortunately, only, too fast losing its unique charm." j A veritable human document was pub-, . Hshed in London recently by Miss Constance Williams and Mr Thomas Jones as.'an appendix volume to the reports j of the Royal Commission on tihe Poor Laws. The volume contains numerous

interviews with firms employing women of the pauper class, or their female relatives. In many different trades a lack of ambition is remarked. Higher wages anight be obtained "if young women would take pains." The girls could be employed all the year round if they "would only try to learn several branches of the work, but in every instance they have declined." On the other luiiid, given a purpose, the women seem to work better. Married women are conspicuous among this type of worker. One case is noted of a woman, aged fifty-six, who has worked for ten; ytars iu order that a daughter may be' educated as a teacher. The manager of a large factory gave a suggestive ex-' planation of the lack of interest and' emulation among young women. He pointed out that in the great majority, of cases the working life of a woman was only about one-fifth that of a man, and that she had not in contemplation the necessity, throughout her life, of providing for herself. The state of one] vast class of workers is summed up in] the .remark, "The wife works; the man boils the kettle." Fifty per cent, of the employees of one firm are married. '"They marry very young—about sixteen; their husbands are usually labourers or loafers, who do not work themselves and force the women to do it."