Of Interest to Women.

Digger (Invercargill RSA), Issue 12, 4 June 1920, Page 12

Of Interest to Women.

MORE ON. WEALTH. In this aiticle we are going to talk about ' material wealth, as far as possible we shall shut- our minds against other meanings of the wordhowever attractive, and pin ourselves cinwn to the plain L.S.D. or "al- , mighty dollar." This is the land of wealth about which so many hard things are said. It is "filthy, lucre," and the love of it is the "root of all evil." We li,ear of the "deceitfulness of riches," and we remember tiie story of how Croesus, the multi-mil-lionaire of ancient times, displayed his treasures to Solon, asking whether tfie sage did not consider hina happy to be the possessor of so much wealth. "I cannot tell," answered the wise Athenian, "till I have seen the end of your life." Did he mean only that riches sometimes take themselves w-ings and fly away ; or did he mean that the possession of wealth is not onough to ensure liappiness, that besides the having, there xnust be the power and tLe opportunity to spend wisely and well ; or that all the gold in the world will not save a man from the pangs of disappointnient, jealously or bereavement? Any one .of the three, or all together he may have nteant. Croesus still occupies the attention of tho wise. Not long ago I read a very wise and very ponderous novel about an unfortunate young man whose income ran into millions. I think he worked it out

that he would, on his father's death be in reeeipt of about £2 a second. I grew weary, as one so often does grow weary, in the maz.es of his difficulties over those millions and the pursuit of happiness/Lui I think he committed suicide in the end. On the other hand, I can see any day in the Invercargill streets, people with pin-ehed and care-worn faces, poor clothes and eyes like those of suffering animals. Women they are mostly, and their whole. appearanc'e proclaims the stress and strain oi holding together ends that harely meet;, Evidentiy wealth may be defined as that which a few people have too much of and many too little. Wealth has two sides, a getting, and a spending. Women possibly know more aho ut the spending than tlae getting ; now to spend money wisely is no less difficult than to earn it honestly. John Ruskin eonsidered most writers on "Economics" to be in grievous fault becau&e they had let't this very matter of spending out of their reckoning. What do we spend money for? To provide the necessities of life first, and then to procure happiness — to euable us to live and then to mak© life worth living. Having laid dowii this definition, we iind it leading us to some curious reflecfcions. The amount of money needed to euable one to live is very srnall. The Oid Age Pensions in this country used to fix it atlOs a week before the war. Has anyone heard of the pension being raised on account of the increased cost of living? I don't remember tb have heard it, but then I ani negligent in the matter of reading the newspaper. Supposing we put the figur.e now at £1 a week, or even 30s, it is evident that the bulk of our income. does not go to keep us alive. It goes to the far more important business of making life worth living. What we pay for the amenities of life is vastly in excess of what we spend on the necessities; and rightly too, for who wants to live a m,ere existence, a life not worth living ? The next question is, what can money buy that does maka life worth while. Quite- a number of things, but what things, depends on the taste of the indiv- . idual. A bicycle, a motor car, or an aeroplane, a new six-roomed bungalow, or a shack at Otatara, a palace or a trip round the world, a graphophone and Caruso records, a new frock, silk stockings, a iea-t at the pictures, or a drive in a taxi out to Wallacetown — all these are merely samples of many things that in various people 's minds, contribute to make life worth living. There are even some misguided individuals who' think a keg of beer, drunk in the wet bush up the Waihopai, something worth having. Consoquently they spend their money on it. The problem of all problems is to teach people a better taste in these things. Taste, according to Ruskin, is the most important thing about a man; for what he likes, that he will do and seek. I noticed recently in the "Southland Times" a paragraph on the difficulties of the Frenchmen in dealing with their financial situation and' the women's silk stockings. In order to raise the value of the franc, they wanted to prohibit the import of silk stockings. The women objected. Silk stockings are among the small things that make life worth living to them. One large manufacturer (of something else) plain ti vely declared that the women in his employ spent more on silk stockings than they did on food and drink. One would like to know what that manufacturers

wife and daughter spent on silk stockings, and why he was surpri&ed at the state of affairs in a world( where women have been by experience taught to look to elegence of draes as a chief means to attract those attentions and favours that go to make life easy and pleasant. The men desire to win the money and spend it on those women whom they admrre'. They openly express their admiration for trim ankles ; why should they complain ili women buy silk stockings? (To be continued.)