WIVES UNLIMITED

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 178, 14 December 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

WIVES UNLIMITED

LADY'S DARING DEFENCE. Bold views in defence of polygamy were advanced by a lady speaker at tlte annual conference of the National 'Union of Women Workers at Oxford. Mrs. 'Flora Annie Steel, who for many years was inspectrcss of schools in the Pnnjtnb, speaking of .the work of mission ladies in (hat region, said that most of these ladies went into the highways and byways with disapproval bound up as an appendix to their Bible- and Prayer Book-. From their point, of view it was impossible for them to see the undoubtedly good points of polygamy, or to admit that the position of Indian women wa> not as aw hole nearly as black as it was generally painted. As a whole. Kuglish women were so saturated with self-sulliciency regarding their own standard of sex relations that they could have nothing but pity for that mo-t beautiful, most sublime spo - tacle on earth—a childless wife lavishin" life love on her husbands' children by another woman. It was the acme of self-abnegation. Some of them might be ready to admit this; the majority - -as she iiad said—would sink admiration in pity. It was no use studying thep osition of Indian women when they had already passed judgment on its de-