Page 3 Advertisements Column 1

Gisborne Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1722, 12 April 1906, Page 3

Under the heading “An Undeair able Invasion—one thousand girls for the matrimonial market,” the Observer concludes an article“ It goes without saying that the unattached maiden sighing for a husband will find many rivals amongst the thousand girls that Mr W. P. Reeves is sending to New Zealand. It is hard, very hard indeed. But what is the remedy ( Unquestionably, New Zealand is sorely in need of domestic servants, and if the New Zealand girls have a soul above domestic service, and prefer to earn their living as factory workers and typewriters, domestic servants must be obtained from somewhere. It is unreasonable to ask that the newly-imported girls should.guarantoe to remain in domestic servitude for a period, in view of an unsatisfied demand for wives who are prepared to share equally the burdens of life, and yet it is sad to see our own maidens drifting into the sere and yellow leaf as undesired and undosirablo old maids. What can be done t Would it be better to import Japanese servants to supply the unsatisfied demand? This suggestion has beon made previously, but has never been acted upon, but it might be preferable to allowing the local matrimonial market to be swamped by Mr'Beeves thousand British girls, with other shipments, possibly, to follow. At the present time, there are scarcely seven thousand marriages annually in New Zealand. In other words, only seven thousand husbands are available annually for the girls of New Zealand. In view of this limited number of matrimonial chances, is it right to bring these thousand Reeves darlings into the country in competi tion with our own girls, with probably more to follow by succeeding steamers? We pause for an answer. ’