HONOURING HAUSFRAUS

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 45, 16 November 1937, Page 14

HONOURING HAUSFRAUS

Germany's Servant Problem ENCOURAGING PRODUCTIVin i - Women who want to enjoy the services of maida must have a number of children befOre they can employ help, if the plan of'Fritz Nonnenbruch, of the official Nazi paper, the Voelkischer Beobachter, is accepted. The ;journalist believes that servants should be rationed acco'rding to the number of children in a family. The "productive" families would receive preference, tho same as metal workers are doled out to factories because of the lack of skilled worken3. For the first time in years a shortage of servants existed in Germany. No longer can a hausfrau commandeer the services of a hard toiling maid for £1 or £2 a month. She must pay ITer servants between £4 and £6 a month each. Maids have becomo class conscious. They no longer rank as servants, but as /'hou&ehold assistants. ' ' A maid in a good Nazi household is regarded as an "older Bister'' by the children of her employ er. The number of girls available for household jobs is declining partly because inany girls enter Nazi ' ' voluntary labour camps" or because, due to tho marriage dowries granted them Dy the Government th9y get married early. But the primary reason for the shortage is the low war and post-war birth rates^ which reduced the number of young persons ready to start work by more than a million. The average birth rate at the turn of the century was more than two million; in the war years it dropped to less than a million. In 1936 it barely reaGhed the 1920-30 average of 1,300,000. The servant problem should be used to help raise the birth Tate. Nonnenbruch suggests. "The increase in birth rate is even more important than the increase in the production of goods," he says. "We honour the mother of many. children. But the children do not belong to the mother alone. They belong -to the- nation." In order to help the mother to bear and. rear children she should be granted speeial household help, the writer advocates. Tax concessions were granted to big families in 1933. Now Nonnenbruch says a maid's wages should be paid by the "National Community" in cases where the moiher of a large family is not able to pay the wages herself.