THE WORM TURNS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8994, 3 December 1907, Page 4

THE WORM TURNS.

A new aspect of the domestic servant problem has arisen in Chri«tchu'rch. It is a common practice for girls to agree to take situations as domestic servants and then to seek elsewhere for more suitable conditions of service, which, if found, they accept, throwing over their prior engagements. This is »ery tantalising to mistresses, arid, of course, very im • proper on the part of the girls; but the latter'ari often quite unconscionable in this respect. Domestic servants are numerically few, mistresses are* innumerable, and the former have plenty of situations to pick and choose from. Nemesis is at last on the tracK of these girls, and a practical warning has just been given to them of the error of their ways by tl.e Stipendiary Magistrate at Christchurch. A mistress had agreed to take a girl into her service at 123 a week, and the girl accepted the position. It was almost a mat'er o: course that she didn't turn up at due date, seeing that much better rates of pay offer in a hundred directions. The mistress did a bold thing, for which she will doubtless receive the thanks of the housekeeping community of the dominion. She sued the girl for a week's wages in lieu of service, and got judgment. The Magistrate viewed the case with mingled feelings of consternation and pleasure—consternation because of the prospect of having no end of work before him in deciding future cases of the kind, and pleasure because he himself had only just been "slipped up" by two girls whom he had engaged. This "turning of the worm" may lead to very interesting developments in the near future.