On the principle I suppose of always asking the busy woman to de an extra job of work. Mrs.T. Hutchison is undertaking the chairmanship of the B.W.A. Hospital Aid Department in succession to Mrs. J. C. Wynnes. Mrs. Hutchison is also president of the Women's Guild of Union Church which, by the way. seems to have found new life, and is a thrive ing. industrious, though small society.
Membei meet weekly and some interesting lem is arranged each time. A week ago Mr. Findlay And-yews found himself unable to speak to the Guild as he had promised, and Miss McQueen substituted. and gave structive information on refugee work, indicating to those present how best they could use their energies to help the cause.
On January 27 Mrs. Blakelock is to give a talk on "Applied Art," and in the meantime all hands are aloft, for between meetings much work is being done in the knitting and sewing line. They have bought $50 worth of wool tly which has to be knitted, and for 24 hours a day with no holidays. Many good working-class housewives in the home countries would regard themselves as ladies of leisure if they had no more to do than has the average Chinese boy or cook, but that is not the point: our servants look upon the cumshaw as theirs, and it seems presumptuous to insist upon the form their charities shall take.
But as for the servants' union which One correspondent prays for, we who have kept house in China for years know that, whether organized, named as such, or not, such a one exists against which neither he nor any other employer could fight successfully if times for servants were good, or if occasion arose. Further, we all know that when a Chinese boy gets in a foreign home he realizes that he is in clover compared to what he might encounter in employment by his own countrymen. Certainly he puts in irregular hours, but that means nothing to a Chinese, and I know many a charwoman at home who would consider herself on Easy Street if she has nothing harder to cope with than has the average Mr. Sun Ching.
Women's Work There are, however, grave problems than house-boys' cumshaws, for the women of the world to face to-day, recording to Mr. Sokolsky.
At a recent D.A.R. gathering held in Shanghai, the address which Mr. G. Sokolsky gave at the Continental Congress was read, and a most interesting and stirring one it must have been, but, much as we admire this speaker's erudition, and in spite of the regard we have for his experience, there are points in his address with which some of us will not agree. He said, for instance:
"Youth to-day here, in Europe, in Asia, is without guidance: it is afraid: there is not moral leadership in the world. The Church has failed, the School has failed, the Family has failed, and until these things are restored Government will fail to provide leadership for youth. This, "he told the women," is your problem, and only women can solve that problem, The men of the world will not do it, they fight over lities."
Poor Youth! Every writer and speaker seems to pick on that to sharpen written or oral eloquence. When there is nothing serious a-doing capital is made out of the modern girl, her lipstick, her free manners, and her dress—or lack of it. Boys who can wield the cricket bat and dislike office desks are scoffed at, and now that the world is involved in every sort of serious trouble, the chief concern of some seems to be how this will react upon modern youth—and ihe burden of correction is laid upon frail woman!
It is possible that youth is suffer not from lack of idence, but too much spoon-feeding. and much interference with its p Jogy. During the past 20 or 30 y it seems to have had a good deal of. guidance.
Doubtless when the adage "Spare the rod and spoil the child," was a common belief, times were bleak for children, but now we seem to have swung to the other extreme.
Quite suddenly earnest folk discovered that Youth was not having a fair chance, and that something must be done about it, but by an excess of misguided zeal. it seems me, certain women have been the worst offenders in creating what is undesirable in modern youth I am not denying that women have done much good social work: they have helped in schools and in educa tion generally, and assisted in raising working conditions for young people put improvements have not been all of their doing. Lord Salisbury, not only a man, but an aristocrat among the first to agitate for, a to achieve, better conditions workers.
That-women have done some good does not alter the fact that certain sections have done a great deal of harm, and that through a curious interference.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.