WOMEN’S INSTITUTES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 August 1938, Page 8

WOMEN’S INSTITUTES

AN INTERESTING STORY. Thirty years ago a Canadian woman felt strongly about the amount of money and thought that the then Government iij. Canada was pouring out on cattle, wheat and farming generally, and one night toward the end of a farmers’ meeting she took her courage in her hands, stood up, and ask-' ed if something could not be done for women and children as well as for cattle and crops. One can imagine that the men were a little aghast at the question. The chairman said it was rather late that night to do anything, but asked if she could call a meeting of women for a fortnight later. History has it that she managed to gather a hundred women together, and so the first women’s institute came into being at Stoney Creek, Canada. The name of the woman who brought it into being was Miss Hordless, and her portrait hangs today in a Canadian university, while her name is known throughout the rural areas of the Empire.

The Government of Canada, through the Department of Agriculture and the

universities, sponsored . the organisa- . tion, putting a man in charge! Until a year or two ago this man was still the superintendent of the Canadian Women’s Institutes. ENGLAND. 9 During the war, when food was becoming scarce in England, when the men who should have been tilling the land were in France and Flanders, and everybody was rationed, the suggestion was made that the establishment of the women’s institutes would stimulate the production of food. The Department of Agriculture became interested. A meeting was called and a Canadian woman, Mrs Watt, told those present about the organisation in Canada. Mrs Watt visited New Zealand last year as the guest of the N.Z.W.I. Institutes then came into being in England and Wales. NEW ZEALAND. About 1921 a New Zealander, Miss Jerome Spencer, then in London, came on an exhibition of handicrafts and home industries and saw for the first time the name “women’s institutes.” Having visited and learned all she could on the subject, on her return to New Zealand she started the first institute at Rissington in Hawke’s Bay. Since then institutes have sprung up in every part of New Zealand until at the moment of writing there are over 900. The administration is based on democratic principles. Each institute regardless of size has a vote. The institutes through their delegates elect a central executive of 12 members and a president. Headquarters are at Wellington,- where this executive, made up of members from various parts of New Zealand, meets six or eight times in the year.