MODERN MAIDS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 June 1939, Page 8

MODERN MAIDS

■ ARE BUSINESS WOMEN. MISTRESS ALTERS HER POINT OF ( VIEW. I — IA change of mind is not in itself a very exciting thing. But when a nation changes its mind the result is usually history. And there is at the moment a definite readjustment going on in England; the revision of a mental attitude that has needed revising for a long time. It is the women who are changing their point of view towards a problem which affects them primarily—the domestic service problem. And that is why nobody need worry about the present servant shortage. It comes at the end of the period wherein l domestic service as a job has been looked upon as thoroughly unpalatable. It will not last. Because, in a short time, the job will be modernised completely, changed and made into a job well worth doing.

■ Reasonable Question, Why has this not been done before? .A reasonable question. But there are reasons also for the fact that, whereas our attitude to most things has suffered a violent revision since the war, our attitude to domestic service has stood still. Social life changed too rapidly. Where once there had been leisured prosperity, large, rich houses, and large, rich families, there was suddenly no leisure, very little prosperity, a glut of large houses on the market, and few rich families left in sight. The average English household began to run itself with the aid of one or at most two servants. That meant drudgery. That meant fifteen hours' work out of the twenty-four; every conceivable task, from carrying up the coal to serving the dinner in cap and apron. With one evening off a week and strict instructions to be home by ten o’clock. No wonder that the majority of young women whose parents had been in domestic service decided that this was not good enough for them. The sixteen-year-old girl of 1928 was ten times as intelligent as the girl of sixteen in 1908. She saw the disadvantages with a straight eye. She wanted liberty; her evenings and her weekends to herself. Even if she could earn higher wages and get her board and lodging free as a servant, she would still be more of a slave than the humblest factory . worker could ever be.

No Future Whatever. Nor did the job itself offer much attraction. The large rich families in the leisured days might have been a pleasure to serve. But she saw no future whatever in the modern version; she saw work that was exacting,, boring, and lonely; without any prospect of advancement. So she stayed away; and the servant shortage began. Various remedies were suggested. It was thought that with the increase of labour-saving devices we should eventually be able to cook our meals and make our beds merely by pressing a series of electric buttons. It was suggested that English housewives would return in despair to the conviction that their place was the home—and do the work themselves. It was prophesied that the maid in her uniform would soon be included among other obsolete curiosities at Madame Tussaud’s. And in all this nobody realised that there was only one person to be blamed; not the domestic servant herself, but her employer, writes Pamela Frankau in an Australian paper. If the housewives of this generation had not changed their attitude they would have had to bear the responsibility of having made the job so unattractive that nobody in her senses would take it on. But now the old opinions are dead. Every sensible and intelligent woman realises that the job is not an easy one; that it is not an attractive one; that the servant of tomorrow, if she is to be happy and efficient in her work, must be treated very differently from the servant of yesterday.

Once and for all, the idea that our daily maid is an automaton has been svyept away. She will get shorter hours; better meals; a pleasant room and elastic liberty. Not by way of a bribe. Simply because we know that, in these days, the running of a home resembles the running of a business. The maid has become a business-as-sociate, a vital partner whose opinions we must consult; who can give us practical hints-as to the saving of her time and ours. Snobbish and Stupid. We no longer tell her sharply what she should be doing; nor do we wheedle her with an over-sweet voice when giving her some particularly loathsome and arduous task. We have learned that this is snobbish, stupid, and out of date. We are modernising otir ideas about housekeeping just as many business men are modernising their offices. We can co-operate with our servants and —most definite evidence of our change of attitude^—we can now admit frankly how important their work is in our daily existence.

This fact was once swallowed down and kept quiet. We were ashamed of it. We talked complainingly about our difficulties with “the girl.” But we never gave her her due; that she has the power to make our material lives run smoothly. For that particular godsend we are now prepared to pay. A really good servant, whether a perfect valet-chauf-feur or a reliable “general,” is so valuable to us that we will economise on some other item of our budget and pay the wages of recognition. Gone are the days when we grudged ::the girl" her week’s salary because it was higher than the salaries paid before the war. We are willing and able to give her what she is worth to us.