THE DOMESTIC PROBLEM

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 1955, 22 March 1919, Page 4

THE DOMESTIC PROBLEM

SHOUTAGE IN ENGLAND. CAUSES DISCUSSED. New Zeal unci is not alone in regard to the domestic servant problem. The servant .shortage, says a London paper, is not only a domestic 1 , but is rapidly becoming a national question. What is (lie reason of a girl’s reluctance to enter domestic service? We must look deep into the past as well as the present; and seek the cause that has made the effect. I asked a woman who keeps her maids for years, and whose house is ran not only well, but comfortably, from whence arose the scarcdty. “It is partly our fault, v she said, “we are paying for callousness in the past. Service must be in a do more attractive if women want to get maids.” I can hear an inclig-

mint chorus: ‘My service is most attractive now; my maids are very well fed and get two evenings out a week,’ etc., etc.

“Quite so! but arc they really well fed? Many people give their maids inferior butter and inferior joints, and cheap bacon and cheap everything ,yet they have the best of everything themselves. Is it necessary to make so marked a contrast between upstairs and downstairs?

AVhat are maids’ bedrooms usually like? They are often a sort of dumping ground for things that are too old and shabby to be put elsewhere.

“I have an excellent housemaid who has been with me for two years. She tells me that in her last place she found her bedroom not only unspeakably dirty, but there was no carpet, and not even a drinking glass or bottle on the washsland; yet this was in a large otherwise luxuriously furnished country liou.se. “My housemaid arrived there three weeks after she was married. A forlorn little bride, whose husband had gone back to France, she burst into tears at the sight of her barely-furnished, dirty, ill-kept bedroom. She told me it made her feel she was only a machine, and that no one cared about her comfort or her troubles. That is not the way to get or to keep good servants.

It is up to us women to make girls like, and Avant to go into service, and no Avoman Avill accomplish this unless she takes a personal interest in the Avclfare of her maids. The hours are long and monotonous, (he work is often a dreary routine; but, if the girls Avere otherwise happy, they Avould not mind. “We Avant a little of Mr Lloyd George’s ‘happiness in the heart of labour’ in our domestic service. There arc many girls avlio prefer a quiet life, but oven they Avant a little fun sometimes, some books and papers in their sitting rooms, a few (loAA’ers, and some attempt at home life.

“Let us face this question bravely, not by talking about it ad nauseam, but by acting. Let us not only endeavour to teach girls how to become efficient, but let us become efficient ourselves and earn tho cheerful service avc clamour for; earn it by patience and consideration and by entering into the lives and studying the needs of our maids. We shall reap a rich reward.”