THE DEARTH OF DOMESTICS. Shall We Import Some?

Free Lance, Volume IV, Issue 169, 26 September 1903, Page 8

THE DEARTH OF DOMESTICS. Shall We Import Some?

FROM Wanganui comes the wail, that is periodically echoed throughout New Zealand, that the country is too prosperous to make it, necessary for anybody to be a domestic servant. Wanganui, therefore, petitions Parliament to put an end to this state of affairs, and import young women of domestic tendencies likely to take kindly to the mop and bucket. Curious thing about this, though, is that if you start importing servant girls you will have to keep going. English girls get colonised in about six months, and become batrmaids, or marry squatters. * ♦ * A girL who has been born, into service in the Old Country is just the sort of young woman to knuckle right under, say "Ma'am," and curtsey for a fortnight, then "play up," become independent and a New Zealander. As a field for girls of the English domestic servant class, Africa has claims before v hioh those of New Zealand sink into insignificance. We cannot give a full-grown Zulu te a girl to help her with the washing-up, and we have no diamond kings to offer her in marriage. The idea of assisted immigration is excellent. We've got too few people herei of either sex, and the gentler sex is getting so intellectual and emancipated that it is absolutely necessary to bring in people less gifted to keep the population going. * * * As we say, however, the maid from the shires will -want to get emancipated and intellect uaJ as soon as she comes into tcuch with our supreme intellectuality. She will drift into the ranks, and the ladies will have to wait for the next bitch. Absolutely, the only way out of the difficulty is to make contracts with the intending immigrants for periods of say five years, during which time they will nob be allowed to become ladies. It is almost impossible to prevent a woman in New Zealand from becoming socially superior to everybody else. We expect it is the chmate, or the labour legislation, or something. * * * One of the causes set forth by the servantless people of Wanganui for the dearth of local domestic help, was the absorption of servants by marriage. Of coarse, the girl from England would noi marry if the ''missus" forbade it. English servants are so obedient — at Home. Lots of people are alleged to be> giving up housekeeping altogether because they cannot get help,- and others &r? leaving New Zealand altogether on the same account. * * » We noticed in the evening paper recently that a man was advertising himself for a position as "general." Here is the true solution. You will not get many white men, and if you get white girls they will be servants only until they change from the chrysalis of British slaveydom into the butterfly of colonial equality. Say the word, and, like Queensland, you can have as many Jap men servants as you want. They \mV ask nothing m the way of social status, and they will perform their work in a way that would please even a Wanganui woman.

Musgrove's Opera Company will open its season at the Opera House on Monday night, in the "Fortune Teller." The management announce that the opera will be staged for six nights only, and advertise that it is to be mounted gorgeously. Mr. Lempriere Pringle, the well-known 1 asso is with the company. * * # Messrs. J. H. Robinson and Son, "The Lucky Wedding Ring," 21, Wil-lis-streeti, advertise their specialties in this issue. This popular firm gives hlalf-a-dozen spoons with each wedding ring sold, and keeps its stock ur> to date with every dainty novelty in the market. Messrs. Robinson point out that they employ no canvassers.