The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1897-05-08
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More and more are women learning
to read the daily papers. They read
not merely the "woman's corner
poetry, births and deaths, and book
reviews. but they are turning TO the
general news, politics, editorials, and
even markets and shipping. The Cur
rent Topics Clubs, which are so much
in vogue, are helping to send women
to the newspapers, as are many of the
women's clubs of the day. Women re-
alize that in their homes the news
paper is their greatest rival, and many
Of them are wisely making friends
with their foes, lingering over the
daily journal. so they may converse
Familiarity with their husbands on the
topics of the times. They will not
need to ask, "Oh, dear; who is Ding
ley. anyway? and what is his tariff
bill? Will it make any difference with
the Islands? and is Mills a Republican
or a Democrat?" They are not the
women who give dinners, and every
time a political topic arises need to
blush for their ignorance, or adroitly
change the subject.
The well-equipped society women of
Washington consider reading the daily
newspaper just as necessary to social
success as their daily food. They are
very greatly occupied these Washing
ton women, and reading many papers
is manifestly impossible; but the news
they must have. So they count as leis-
ure moments the time given to hair
dressers and masseuses-surely time
in which the busy brains might rest.
But no. That is the hour when the
professional newswoman comes bring
ing her budget of foreign and domes-
tic doings to stock my lady's mind
with new conversational material.
Thus she boldly launches out into the
various tides in the fluctuating sea of
politics, and fears no wreck, because
of old charts.
Few women find their time more
fully occupied than these busy lead
ers in Washington society. Although
we do not admit that we have any
more time to kill than our Washing
ton sisters, [ fear we do not follow
their worthy example in cleaning the
daily news. I admit the newspaper
conditions are somewhat different
here. Our own little newspapers, for
sooth. with nothing but their An
nexation schemes and Cable rumors'
(sicD command attention of only
sad few of our women, unless it be the
elaborate description of some brilliant
social event. This state of things is
deplorable even in the circumscribed
field of activities that our newspaper
men can chronicle. With foreign news
papers we do a little better. We gorge
ourselves the day after they come
with papers. which, alas for us! grow
stale before their contents can have
been swallowed. Then the appetite for
news is lost. We turn to our teas, to
our phianlthropies, and perchance to
an occasional magazine, but the Jaded
annette for world doings must needs
wait to be whetted by the telephone
bell which announces another steamer
off Koko Head.
The newspapers give us life. 1t may
he life in London alleys or Chicago
boulevards, the circle of the Carson
prize fight. or the unsavory company
of the Trusts: but it is seething, in
disputable, persistent living. The
newspapers give us philanthropy, sci
entific discovery, literary achievement
and philosophic theory. The newspa-
pers. then, give us a record of the
worlds progress. "A study of this vast
composite photograph presented each
day should help us the better to lay in
our strokes on the picture of life
that each must paint with the living.
Let us then be wise women. Let us go
to the daily papers with the vast null
tftude of readers, among whom we
find philosophers and novelists, states
men and merchants, financiers and
professors. Let us know what men
and women are doing over there in
the busy world the Pacific keeps at
bay; and when we go back to it, or
when. perchance, it comes to us, we
shall know the world even as we would
have it know our Hawaii nei.