HUSBANDS AT HOUSEWORK.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9372, 15 February 1909, Page 7

HUSBANDS AT HOUSEWORK.

The servant question in New York ■seems to have reached a painfully acute stage. An American professor of political economy recently declared that no family with an income of less than £IOOO a year ought to indulge in the luxury of keeping a domestic servant. The Daily Mail’s New York correspondent says that however preposterous this may seem to an Englishman, it is sound com-mon-sense in America. The experience of an Englishman and his wife who bad been induced to leave London for New York by an apparently more lucrative position, is cited. They took a house on the outskirts of the city a? £l5O, and ' after some difficulty, secured a foreign servant, who could not speak English, £>) a month. This girl could make beds, wash dishes, and cook indifferently, hat 4he would not clean hoots or light the furnace that warmed the house. A furnace lighter had to he employed at £3 a month during the winter, so that for rent and domestic service the English couple found they were paying £233 a year. However, they were better off than their neighbours, who, in spite of incomes of from £4OO to £6OO, had to do with out servants and furnace lighters. “The men of the households before going to business in the mornings would descend into the cellars and worked laboriously on the furnace. They could be seen before breakfast staggering beneath ash barrels and garbage cans which it was their duty to deposit on the pavement ready for the dustman. Occasionally they would seize a spade and clear 'some of the heaped mud and filth from the gutter which the street scavengers habitually neglected, and in the winter their matutinal task would include the sweeping of the snow from the doorsteps and the section of the pavement immediately in front of their residence.” Having arrived in the city after a most uncomfortable train journey, they would spend tenpehce for a shave, and sixpence co 'have their hoots cleaned, before going to their offices, Fortunately the Ameroan man of this class is a domesticated animal, who does not mind helping in the washing and drying of dishes after his day’s work. The correspondent, after an examination of family budgets, says it is not until the income exceeds £6OO that the item “servant’s wages” finds a place.