THE WIFE’S SHARE OF THE WORK.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 2376, 1 October 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE WIFE’S SHARE OF THE WORK.

" Thk domestic comfort of the selector's home can to a great extent be judged of by a glance at the woodpile," writes the agricultural reporter of the Queenslander, and continues :—" When I see at the back of the house two or three heavy ironbark logs marked all over with axe nuts and no small firewood about, I kuoa the cooking cannot be {rood, for it is done under unreasonable difficulties. I am loath to bring an accusation of nngallantry against our hard-working selectors of homesteads and farm", but neverthe!e-s it is a fact that far too many of them do not study in the least how they can save the labor of their wives. Such a simple erection as a roof over the wood heap is seldom to be seen ; and when a small pile of stove wood bus been nut by the men or the boys it has often been done at the expense of much coaxing from the wife and mother, and done with great reluctance upon the part of the males. They will doubtless come in from the milking-house and grumble because the breakfast is not ready, whereas if some kindling wood had been cut the day before and carried to the kitchen fire the wife would have been perhaps able to ' nurse the baby, attend to the children, and prepare the breakfast. So it is ,viih many things. Scrapers may easily be made by man or boy and fixed at the doors (and used too) but they are not, and extra scrubbing of floors is the result. A barrow-load of gravel misrht !>■ wheeled to the bad; door and sp vad about, but it is no:. Farm washing of the clothes is notoriously hard work, hut it often has to be done by women when standing at a bench outside and exposed to the heat of the sun's nys. and perhaps on the banks of the crick s veral hundred yards from the house, and up the steep [ banks of which the woman has to carry the p i of water. It undoubtedly is this waut of home comforts that makes bush life so unpopular with even bush-born girls. They note the wife of the town artisan with his r-nmr little cottage, the wood brought to the door already cut into small billets, the patent stove in place

of the bi;f smoky obnnncy and tli*- camp ovc-ii, tin* handy and clean ba.tk vard with wator-pipo laid up to the tub, and th»*r compare ill this with the l«»o often discomforts of hush life. Our farmers, (Unnins iiHmh*d, must piv morc attention to the romfort of th»ir women, for housework is im-t-s* mt. aui lasts knur hour.-* aLc*r that of th- m-n