The gendering of clothing has begun to change during these postwar years. One striking aspect of the change is a new androgynous look. Young men are shaving off all facial hair so they seem smooth and ‘girlish.’ At the same time, their trousers are getting so baggy that they are starting to look a lot like women’s prewar divided skirts. Young women are beginning to cut their hair short while flattening their breasts, waists and hips. One big step towards the new ‘boyish’ look for women is the very latest fashion in dresses and skirts: the ‘drop’ waist. The drop waist helps to turn the natural shape of a woman’s body into a tube. The Observer, portraying the new waist today, does so with a warning: ‘It is graceful and becoming to slim figures, but should not be worn by people inclined to stoutness.’
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Observer, 23 October 1920

The Press editorialises today about a postwar campaign by the Japanese government for international recognition of the principle of racial equality. Japan proposed last year that the Versailles Treaty include clauses banning discrimination on racial grounds; the proposal was vetoed by the governments of Australia and the United States. The New Zealand government was not keen on the Japanese proposal but handled things less stridently than Australia or the United States. Japan is now angry with state and federal authorities in Canada and the United States, where anti-Japanese racism is growing. The Press editorial points out that while most people in New Zealand ‘sympathise with’ anti-Japanese feeling in Canada and the United States, at the same time it is important to acknowledge how upsetting those feelings are for the people of our ally Japan. A Tokyo journal is quoted as saying that racism is ‘an inhuman and bestial instinct’ at odds with ‘the spirit of the League of Nations.’ Other journals in Tokyo are saying that ‘the Americans are trying to subject the whole world to their selfish plan.’ The Press ends by pointing out astutely that American attitudes have ‘aroused such bitter resentment’ in Japan that ‘future relations between the two great Pacific Powers are likely to be very difficult.’
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The Press, 22 October 1920

One of the lead stories in the papers today concerns their own freedom to voice political opinions. The Grey River Argus, the only daily newspaper anywhere in the country to support the Labour Party, was convicted yesterday under wartime censorship law. An article in the newspaper ‘incited lawlessness’ by saying: ‘From the wage earners’ point of view, the most important event in the world to-day is the success attending the Red Army of Russia in scattering and humiliating all the forces of reaction and intrigue that can be scraped together by the Allied capitalists.’ The article also said that the working class of the world must fight for justice not by tinkering with the system but by becoming ‘uncompromising revolutionists.’ No publication was ever convicted for saying such things before the First World War. Wartime tightening of political censorship is now being kept up by the postwar conservative government. The Grey River Argus does not bow its head. ‘If it should prove that the peaceful advocacy of Socialism in their own press is incomparable with the laws of New Zealand, or rather with the present regime,’ the paper declares in its editorial today, ‘then it will be for the workers of this country to consider what other steps must be adopted.’
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Grey River Argus, 20 October 1920

A leader of the Salvation Army has just joined the chorus of those who say that the war and a new postwar mood of materialism has led to a change in sexual habits among the young people of New Zealand. He tells the Council of Churches that ‘immorality is rife’ and that ‘the standard of morals of many people ... is very low.’ He goes on to sat that ‘young girls go into sin of the grossest kind without any compunction, and this I think is due to the circumstances under which they live. The chief cause of juvenile depravity is the laxity of home training.’ He claims that drinking and gambling are vectors, too. Nothing is said about the sexual behaviour of the men who have sex with these ‘depraved’ young women.
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Lyttelton Times, 19 October 1920

The government, controlled by the conservative Reform Party, is putting a bill to parliament that will increase the rates of death duty. New Zealand death duties target the rich; anybody who dies with a small or middling sum of wealth is only taxed lightly. William Massey, prime minister, says that hiking death duties is not something his government would do in an ideal world but it must be done now because the postwar boom is ending, export prices are dropping and it is ‘necessary for us to strengthen the finances of the country.’ He stresses that ‘the additional burden is being placed on the large estates.’ After the bill is passed, anybody who dies worth £100,000 or more will have to pay 20 per cent of that wealth to the state. The average yearly wage in the workshops and factories of New Zealand is £177 for men and boys and £80 for women and girls. The new death duty is strongly backed by the Liberal Party. Josiah Hanan, lawyer and leading Liberal, says ‘it will make for a more equitable distribution of wealth.’ Sharing wealth fairly evenly is traditional Liberal policy. ‘This country,’ adds Hanan, ‘does not want an idle rich class, piling up capital at the expense of the general well-being.’ The Reform Party is willing to hike tax on the rich, even though they are the party of capitalists, because they know the electorate will not let them tax the working class. Thanks to the highly developed political awareness and political activity among New Zealand working people even a conservative government has limited elbow room when trying to safeguard the wealth of the wealthy.

The Dominion, 16 October 1920
NZ Yearbook (Chapter XX, Industrial Manufacture, Salaries and Wages)

The alliance between the British Empire and the Japanese Empire has been a cornerstone of foreign policy since it was signed eighteen years ago. An editorial in The Press today talks about the future of the alliance. The governments of Britain, Japan and the United States have been wondering all year whether the alliance could be widened. Tokyo is keen on making it a three-way alliance of Britain, Japan and the United States. Washington and London are thinking about asking a fourth partner to join: China. The editorial notes that diplomats ‘generally’ agree that opinion in Australia and New Zealand ‘must have special weight’ in the question since they are the self-governing states of the British Empire ‘most affected by the political arrangements that the Powers may make in the Pacific.’ The Australian government seems not to favour either renewing or enlarging the alliance, being inclined to see Japan as a rising rival to the British Empire. The New Zealand government has not come out with any clear statement about the alliance. The Press expresses no opinion of its own, but tells the government it needs to get to work and sort out a policy.
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The Press, 15 October 1920

A working-class woman who signs herself ‘A Tired Mother’ has a letter today in the Poverty Bay Herald in which she calls for the state to step in and help women in her position. ‘As the mother of eight living children, all school age and under ... I can say quite honestly that a mother who has to make ends meet on a labourer’s wage to cover everything required for a family of ten is practically a slave, with the same old grind year in, year out, with never a spell, making, patching, washing, scrubbing, to say nothing of worrying and nursing. ... Quite recently, we were told what a great service one of our local farmers had rendered to the district and country by rearing good sheep. Is my service any less if I turn out eight New Zealanders ... ?’ Tired Mother will have to wait a few more years before she can get any income support from the state; the Reform government in 1926 will begin a system of ‘Family Allowance’ for poor families with three or more children, but even then the allowance will be little more than £5 a year for each of those children and mothers will need to prove they are married, morally respectable, and not Asian.
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Poverty Bay Herald, 14 October 1920

Conservatives everywhere in the country are saying that workers who go on strike in such key industries as coalmining are not only disloyal but betraying soldiers who fought for ‘freedom’ in the First World War. One way of fighting working-class ‘sedition’ would be to outlaw people from speaking or writing freely about communism. ‘Steps should at once be taken to unearth and seize the stocks of Bolshevik literature,’ says Free Lance today, ‘and to prevent the distribution broadcast over the country of this poisonously seditious stuff. Not only should such literature be destroyed, but those who import it and may attempt its distribution, should be deported.’ The government should ‘purge the country, once and for all, of these enemies to free and liberal institutions, these would-be corrupters of the minds of our workers.’
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Free Lance, 13 October 1920

The Grey River Argus, the only Labour Party daily newspaper in the country, editorialises today about the First World War. ‘The war was supposed to be to make the world safe for democracy, whatever that is. It was also supposed to be to crush militarism, and end war, for ever and for ever. It was also supposed to be to give the right of self-determination to nations and many other beautiful dreams ... But, what have we accomplished? We have piled up an appalling debt upon which the unborn shall have to pay an appalling interest for ever and for ever ... We were told that it was a fight between autocracy and democracy, and yet we have been blockading the only country which has overthrown its autocratic government. We were told that we were fighting to give self-determination to small nations, and we have 60,000 troops in Ireland. We were told that the war was going to make better conditions for the working classes, and we gaol the leaders who strive to get it.’

Grey River Argus, 12 October

The big city daily newspapers all run columns of news and opinion about the latest books being published in New Zealand, Australia, Britain and the United States. Only very occasionally do they look at books from other countries. New Zealand readers are steered, in this way, towards the viewpoints of what will later be called the Anglosphere. The Otago Daily Times in its books column today talks about new books by D H Lawrence, H G Wells, John Galsworthy, Winston Churchill, Edith Wharton, Maxim Gorky. Also discussed are writers who will later be more or less forgotten, among them the New Zealand novelist Hugh Walpole. Walpole’s new novel is The Captives, set ‘in London and at the seaside, and the principal figures are set against a background furnished by a certain religious sect.’ Walpole, born in Auckland, spends most of his adult life in Europe. He has become a bestselling author thanks to writing popular lightweight books.

Otago Daily Times, 09 October 1920

Conservatives throughout the country are unhappy about the way disputes between coalminers and mineowners have been dragging on. They blame the miners for being ‘disloyal’ and ‘greedy.’ Coal is crucial to cooking, heating and boiling water in most houses; it is also crucial to shipping, railways and keeping the wheels turning in the many factories that use steam power. ‘We must have coal, and I would suggest that black British subjects be introduced to mine it,’ a returned soldier writes today. ‘The war was fought for liberty and for the welfare of our womenfolk, but we return to New Zealand to find the horrors of peace worse than the horrors of war, and our women driven to distraction to provide meals for their households.’ A second returned soldier writes about the problem in much the same way. ‘I cannot understand why the population of this Dominion should knuckle down to the dictation of the labour autocrats who have taken control of the vital industries of this country.’ He thinks that the government should hold a referendum ‘on the question of producing the necessary coal required from our mines by means of coolie labour.’ Coolie labour ‘would be all right providing they are kept in compounds at the mines, and returned to their homes after their time has expired.’ Conservatives for nearly seventy years have been calling for Asian workers to be brought into the country.

New Zealand Herald, 08 October 1920

The Otago Daily Times, one of the leading newspapers behind the Reform Party, says in its editorial today that the postwar world faces a choice between a collapsing old economic, social and political order and two forms of revolution. The first of those revolutions is ‘a Bolshevist form founded on hate, revenge, and covetousness.’ The other is a form based on ‘supreme faith in God.’ Christians must step up. They must stop the class war. They must bind in love the capitalists and the working class. They must strive for a revolution in which Christian principles will come to reign in the economy, in politics and in society. ‘In other words the “choice before us” to-day is either to give Christianity a trial or to see civilisation rush headlong over the precipice and dash itself to pieces on the jagged rocks beneath.’ A good many churches, however, are strongly linked to the rich and powerful - above all the Anglican church.
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Otago Daily Times, 01 October 1920