DISTRESSED HOUSEWIVES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10060, 3 June 1910, Page 4

DISTRESSED HOUSEWIVES.

New Zealand mothers, compelled by Fate, and by an indifferent Legislature, to solve the problem of life without domestic help, may feel inclined to form a branch of an American organisation which can be called the "League of Distressed Houcswives" —though we believe it bears some less* expressive name. The members bind themselves chiefly by vows to leave unnecessary work undone. That stern rule known as.the "simple life" need not be followed in all its bare integrity; but in all respects, compatible with home comfort, they are to uphold the "simple housekeeping." The root idea is illustrated in the story of some sympathetic friends describing a visit to twins, when the two babies had | been found wailing together at one | end of the room, while the young | mother, left servantlesa, was patiently ironing out the glories of eight starched robes. "But why dress them in robes?" asked a "simple" housekeeper. "Did true motherliness and industry lie in letting their infant sorrows go untended, because she was engaged with their unnecessary clothes?" Such distressed housewives, we are told, should dress their infants in soft woollen garments, which wash with ease, and should beware on all occasions, of yielding to the natural feminine Jove for starch and gloss. The unironed garment, as American hygiene long since discovered, is by far the healthier wear, owing to the effects of sunshine and fresh air still harbouring in its uncompressed cells. Then in her rooms, the modern housekeeper (so sadly without the "maidens" who shared those toils of Solomon's "virtuous woman") is entreated to avoid any excess of adornment which may delay a conscientious dU3ter. A New Zealand household, not long ago, faced an unexpected lack of domestic service, and a daughter, nobly undertaking the housemaid's work, was dismayed to find, when the first evening fell, that she bad spent the whole day in dusting the drawing-room. Certainly there had never been such super-sx-cellent dusting beforv but the experience opened the eyes of the family to some slight superfluity of ornament. Even dinners may be modified without much harm. The League condemns the modern barbarism of an uncooked nut diet, but commends to its faithful members the old fashioned simplicities of roast and boiled. A regimen of "simple housekeeping" and "soft shirts" might at last convince even our Parliamentary men that improved help is badly needed. But we fear, in general, woman's passion for perfection makes her as willing a martyr as the Chinese cook who, in Australian wilds, where no such thing as a flat iron existed, still produced--"got up" shirts, by the aid of a tin tei-pot.filled with boiling water.