IMMIGRANT MAIDS.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 485, 19 April 1909, Page 3

IMMIGRANT MAIDS.

A WORD FROM A WORKER. A Wanganni correspondent. treats the question of tho hour as follows:—"I, in common with many others of my sex, am greatly Emused at the pitiful plaint put forward by the mistress who requires a country servant, and tho arguments put forward in tho country's,favour. Well, my experience in a country placo was three months, Christmas and New Year time included, and if mine was a sample of the rest of the country .servant .places, give mo a factory or even a Chinese laundry in preference. Five in the morning till eight at night, recognised holidays nil, Sunday the samo as any other day, no conveniences to lighten labour or carry wood, coal and water, although a trap was kept in which tho mistress went to town one© a week, or oftcner if a play was on —these were the conditions. Mark you well, she never was woman enough to say: 'Would you like to go to-town at Christmas or New Year time, or at night to a play or any amusement.' Wβ did not even see tho daily paper, and, although I am tho offspring of workers only, I never saw a Christmas or a New Year but thie one that" I did not get a bit of cake or a morsel of fruit. "Let the mistress bring out immigrants by all means, but lot every mistress that wants one pay unconditionally tho girl's passage. Let them act a white woman's part to their fcllowwomcn in this Dominion, and then the office billets won't bo overrun, with girls. Of course, all mistresses aro not alike. My experience has been that a woman that treats Jier servants well can always got another when one leaves. Look through tho books of Wellington Hospital and; see how Imany servant girls 'go through it in a year hopelessly • run down. Then talk of more immigrants.—l am, etc., "OPEN TO CONVICTION."