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Show Kathleen Norris Says: No Shortage of Jobs for Women of 50 Bell Syndicate WNU Feature. X fiU MW Give your free mfternoons every week to the sick of the neighborhood or to yur hospital kitchen and you'll not have to ask again for the right to do "something "some-thing for the boys." By KATHLEEN NORRIS THIS article is written for women of 50 years and more who have some time to spare, cannot enter upon defense jobs with regular regu-lar and difficult hours, and yet are passionately anxious to do something to help our country in her hour of need, and bring nearer the glorious hour of a good and honest peace. Such women speak to me and write to me every day. I am never in any group but what they approach ap-proach me. "My daughter is working work-ing in a machine plant and the boy is in uniform, but what can I do? I must do something!" they say. Well, I'll tell you one thing that you can do, a thing that embraces a thousand others. You can help our woefully small and insufficient army of doctors and nurses. We have not enough now, and we are going to feel a dangerous shortage later on. You can do what the writer writ-er of this article hopes to do, follow a Red Cross primary training by a special course in midwifery, learn to handle women through normal confinements, and welcome new babies into this war-clouded world for the young mothers go right on having them, God bless them, and that work must be done. 300 Babies, No Nnrses. In one western town whose normal staff was 17 doctors, four are left. The obstetrician among these told me that he had listed among ward, clinic and private patients exactly 300 babis who are due before April. Asked about nurses he said: "There are NO nurses!" and he spoke with considerable feeling about families who keep one nurse or even two for routine chronic invalid care that might be handled easily by the idle women of the family. "It ought to be stopped and I believe it will," he said. Only a few days later I chanced to look, on a hospital visit, into one of those large, clean pantries that hospitals have on every floor, sink, cabinets, gas stove, hoppers, and so on. It was a shocking sight. Trays, pans, basins, tumbled linen, piled dishes were everywhere; the nurse who flashed in and out again was perspiring her face on a very hot day was the color of wax but she smiled gallantly as she said: "Last year this time we had 70 le'ss patients pa-tients and 39 nurses. Now we have 15 nurses for the whole crowd!" Well, I don't know that I'll ever qualify as a licensed midwife, but I knew right then and there that until that pantry looked very different I had a war job. And in a clean apron with a box of soap flakes and a mop I came back a few minutes ; later. It takes study and skill to deliver babies, but the woman who washes dishes and assorts sheets and sterilizes bandages frees a graduate grad-uate nurse from that work, and has her place, too, in the great war story. My reward that day was to feel many a young strong arm go about me for a second, while many a grateful grate-ful voice said in n ear: "You're an angel!" and nobody could ask more genuine happiness then that Health an Obligation. Give your free afternoons every week to the sick of your neighborhood neighbor-hood or to your hospital kitchen, and you'll not have to ask again for the right to do "something any-thing any-thing for our boys!" Get in touch with your doctor, and he'll give you a list of patients who merely need beds made or soup heated. And do what you can to keep your own home people well; don't tolerate any of the minor ills that ITS THERE If you have not yet found a war job, you haven't looked hard enough. You may not find it in a factory, if you have no special skill. You may not find it in the armed forces. But you will find it in a hospital hos-pital where there are floors to be scrubbed and linens to be sorted. You will find it in the home of a sick friend. You will, perhaps, find it right in your own home if you have been relying on someone else to do a dozen little things you could do for yourself. And finding it, says Kathleen Nor-ris, Nor-ris, is your job. lead to serious trouble, not this war winter! Health is an obligation that we owe America, while her youth and power and glory are committed to this tremendous adventure, and it's mother who holds that responsibility responsi-bility at home. So if Dad is making too long and tiring a shift of cars and trains and busses to get home, see whether you can't find the simplest, the plainest little quarters nearer his work. If the working girls come in weary and cold, have a cup of hot soup or malted milk ready. This idea of a warming drink before a hearty meal is one that dietitians everywhere ap prove. To get very tired and huni gry often means that a hearty meal doesn't get digested before bedtime by the cold and weary stomach) The hot drink, the comfortable chair and pleasant news all help to make dinnertime a success. If cold feet and backache and headache and nerves and restlessness restless-ness at night are chronic, they are apt to have one cause constipation. Lack of exercise, long sedentary hours in the factory or office, and lunches of pastry, strong tea or coffee, cof-fee, sweets, accentuate it Mother can do a lot about that with the introduction in-troduction of raw vegetables at dinner, din-ner, salads of lettuce, chopped carrots, car-rots, apples, cabbage, spinach and by serving a dark rough bran bread. And make desserts laxative; prunes, apples, figs, oranges and grapefruit can be served in about 300 ways, all helpful. Hot tomato juice, hot prune and apple puree are medicinal enough, as are ginger bread and ginger-molasses cookies to cure many of these cases of chills and aches and nerves, and to hold off the colds and bronchial and laryngeal conditions to which they lead. Get your family through this winter without a night of lost sleep or a sneeze and you will be doing your share of the big job. No Shortage of Jobs. If the youngsters are tired and nervous enough to complain; if they demand starches and gravies and heavy meats, take them into your confidence. Explain that you are meeting all sorts of war conditions; shortage of fuel, difficult transportation, transpor-tation, higher prices, the need for closer management of finances, beef scarce, bananas gone, domestic help unprocurable, and insist that they co-operate to the extent of remembering remem-bering overshoes, drafts, overfatigue over-fatigue and by eating what Mother tells them to! Oh, there isn't going to be any shortage of jobs for us older women, as the war months go on. The only question is whether we are going to be willing enough and humble enough to step into them. And I think we are. I think we presently will have an army of mothers and wives quietly filling the menial and minor positions that free the younger and more experienced women for actual war services. |