The Globe. THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 1876.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 568, 13 April 1876, Page 2

The Globe. THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 1876.

Neav Zealand may bo characterised as the paradise of Servant Grids, at least as regards the rate of wages and the choice of situations, there is scarcely a daily newspaper in the colony published wherein is not to be seen advertisements for female servants ; thirty and four pounds a year is offered in many instances for good servants in Ohristchurch, whilst on the West Coast the wages range from twentyfive to thirty shillings a week. It has therefore become a very serious matter in household affairs how best to secure the services of female domestics; and then comes the difficulty of how to make them sufficiently satisfied with their places, so as to be enabled to retain them. With the absolute scarcity of domestic

servants at the present time people have to put up with what they can get, and as a general rule the servants that are secured are not servants at all, they have to be taught everything in connection with their duties, and immediately they have acquired an insight into the work they have to perform they strike for more wages. But the most objectionable feature in the whole business is the airs they assume and the ridiculous objections which they to do any little matter outside the general routine. In the United States servants are always termed helps. Why, we do not know, as the ladies invariably call them hindrances. There they stipulate that they clean no boots, knives, nor windows ; and as to dress, they can outshine the mistress of the house. There is scarcely an immigrant ship which .arrives here with a dozen girl* on board but there are a hundred applicants for their services, and yet we have to be told every hour of the day that it is high time that immigration was discontinued. We see no reason whatever that we should have to pay such an enormous tax as this heavy wage is, it really amounts to a positive prohibition, to people of moderate means, against keeping a domestic in the house ; and what with servants' wages, the high rental, the education rate, the rate for school buildings, and the- drainage assessment, one should have a very good salary or a remarkably prosperous business ere he seriously entertains the idea of settling down in the " City of the Plain." As to a man with an income of £l5O or £2OO a year trying to attempt to keep up the semblance of respectability it is utterly impossible, and yet we all know that these amounts in the old country are amply sufficient, and do support many thousands of highly respectable families. We do not see where to look for a remedy for this state of affairs, excepting it be in the encouragement of immigration, so far as domestic servants, but what is wanted is the real article; seam tresses, machine workers, and factory hands are not good servants, neither will they ever make good servants ; the free and independent habits which they get from the amount of time they have at their disposal after the day's work is ended, and the variety of amusements of which they can avail themselves, will not permit them to settle down to domestic servitude. That some remedy should be devised is an imperative necessity. We shall be glad to receive any commicatious on this subject for publication.