The Wanganui Chronicle. " Nulla Dies Sine Linea." WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 6, 1909. " THE SONG OF THE SHIRT."

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume L, Issue 12145, 6 January 1909, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle. " Nulla Dies Sine Linea." WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 6, 1909. " THE SONG OF THE SHIRT."

The present position of the womanworker in the Old Country, as disclosed in a recently published volume entitled "Women in Industry," is far from enviable. The book has a preface by Mr Shnckleton, M.P., and it consists of essays by Gertrude Tuckwell, Constance Smith, Mary Macarthur, May Tennant, Nettie Adler, Adelaide Anderson, and Clementina Black. The grievances of the woman worker in the Mother Country are real enough to demand the attention and sympathy of all social reformers, and her in ere fortunate sisters in these over-sea Dominions may well be thankful that their lot is not as hers. Miss Tu.kwell, one of the contributors, points out that the unprotected sweated homeworker is competing against progress uml machinery: "Gee of the great evils of these chaotic conditions is that dying trades are artificially kept alive which in a healthy state of industry would have been allowed to disappear. The children who are reared to no other trade than *match-box making yn their homes are helping to maintain an industry which should not exist. Their struggle is to a great extent accounted for by the fact that they are competing with the same articles manufactured by machinery, with the consequence that such a trade must eventually "go," and those who have been brought up with no other equipment for a struggle in which efficiency is essential must further complicate our problems by adding to the unemployr able and unemployed." As a rule the sweated woman worker takes her labour into a hopelessly crowded market^ made the more, crowded in many instances by the presence of undesirable aliens She is not in a* position to bargain J3he must take what she can get. As Miss Constance Smith says: "The l' sweated worker must take the work that is offered her at the price which hen employer chooies to pay. If this price be arbitrarily lowered or cut down by fines and deductions which she can-i not account for, she dares not demand an explanation; her services are so easily dispensed withj and there are a hundred rivals, as poor and as hungry as herself, to snatch the work from her fingers should they hesitate for a mcmerit to close upon it." It is an ugly picture—women toiling all the hours of tho day and many of the hours of tho. night often to make luxuries for the well-fo-do. Read the following from,, the paper by Miss Clementina Black: '•'Boxes for wedding cake are sometim«3 made at home, and not the tiniest smudge or spot must mar the satinywhito surface. Some smiling bridesmaid puts up cake into that pretty little receptacle; some interested recipient draws out the cards and the cake; the box is tossed into the wastepaper basket; no one thinks of the tired woman at the mother end of the chain, tired but attentive, folding and bend.-, ing and pasting, hour after hour till lato at night, week after week, month after month, doing always^ the same

tiling and never earning enough to know comfort. Her toiling figure in the oackground casts rather an ugly shadow upon a pretty and friendly old custom, just as hundreds of similar figures cast their shadows upon our clothes, our ornaments, our amusements—upon who knows how many of

ihf: familiar objects that each of us touches every day?" "We ask," says Miss Smith, "whether something cannot be done to stay this perpetual forcing; flown of wages by the action of" unchecked competition." What has been done in New Zealand is an answer to +his question. As.uredly something can bo don?. The restriction of factory 1 gislation would do something, but nob enough. More factory laws are required, and the sooner they are framod and passed the better it will be not only i'cr the sufferers themselves but oteo for tho reputation of English statesmen. Much ha.3 already been accomplished, but it is evident that a gieat deal still remains to be done before the presence of mothers and cf children in factories will cease to be numbered among the social scandals of tho Old Land.