Is it Better to Sew or to Serve ?

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 207, 18 June 1887, Page 3

Is it Better to Sew or to Serve ?

While we are hearing of the sufferings of those workingwomon who, it is said, prefer careless, hopeless toil and semi-starvation in their own overcrowded garrets to the restraints and degradation of domestic service, we may well ask where they have obtained their knowledge, or, rather, imbibed their prejudice, were it not that consideration of tho matter induces one to believe there is no preference. They sew and starve- because others sow and starve, and to do so requires no effort, only endurance. To take service, if the thought has ever entered their minds, needs energy and courage to face new and unknown "conditions of life, and they are withheld by a vague dread. If, however those who eret so far as to think of houseworkas apossible alternative to needlework are met by false and prejudiced versions of the conditions under which servants live and the relations they hold to their employers, it is no wonder if, devitalised by poor food, weakened by their unremitting labour, they shrink from the prospect and fall back into slavery from which they would fain have emerged. They work and suffer, and insist that relief can only come to thorn in one way— better pay for tho work they do. If the sewing woman docs not like her work she dare not quit it ; to do so means starvation. If the taskmaster cheats her she dares not refuse to be cheated ; her work will be taken from her and given to one of the dozens waiting to take her place. If she is brutally spoken to, she dares not resent it ; and there are, we are assured, worfae things than cheating and brutality that she must submit to without^ resentment, or bo marked for persecution. So much for being her own mistress. And this ceaseless, ill-paid work is performed under every form of physical discomfort, in bad air, in overcrowded rooms, in winter cold, in torrid summer heat, with insufficent food and sickly, ill-clad body. The time which she calls her own, where is it, when the machine runs from morning till night? After the day's task is done? When we know the pittance she earns we may be quite sure that day's task will not be done so long as human nature can bear up against fatigue. The time between the cessation of work until it begins agaki must surely be a stupor of exhaustion. Can tho weary woman then give herself up to the pleasures of " home ?" Can she take the recreation for which being " mistress of her own time" is supposed to give opportunity? Contrast this veritable slavery -with the fieedom of the domestic servant. If she does not like her place she leaves. Whether she performs her part of tho bargain between herself and her employer or not, she is paid. There are no pretext* for reducing her wages for work imperfectly done, nor reductions made because tho shirts and collars, or table linen, she lias undertaken to iron, but does badly, have to be sent to the laundry and paid for. If she has temporary illness, days when some family crisis, the arrival of some kindred from abroad, or wakes, or weddings, or funerals, make her desire a day off, she has it without loss of money, the mistress often making strenuous efiorfe, putting off or changing her own intentions for this purpose ; for be it said ever so gently, there is in the majority of cases very little choice in the matter — if Deliadoes not go for a holiday, she leaves her place at a moment's notice. It is, unfortunately, true, in this day and generation, as in all that have gone before, that theie is no way of earning a living, or even of conscientiously doing our life part, without giving up some of our liberty and our timo ; but of all ways by which a working woman can make he** living there is not one by which she can do it so easily, so independently, and so healthfully, as in domestic service.