I.—9a.

MISS HOLMES.]

111

carpenter; and so on through all the masculine trades. Domestic servants most justly look forward to being married, which is their proper sphere. They occupy the earlier years of their lives in domestic service, which is, in a degree, a training for their future career. It complicates their position with regard to their employers that they do not intend to be always dependent on this occupation. They are enabled to take service and earn good wages when they are by no means expert in their calling. There are a certain number of what I would call good professional servants —middle-aged women —who now know that they are not going to be married, and who are prepared to accept service as their lot in life. These are the most superior class. I have been very fortunate in coming across some of these in nay career, and they are now my firm friends whether they are in my house or out of it. It, of course, gives servants a very strong position, when they are not dependent upon their trade. Their real fate is to be married, and quite properly so. At present the employers have evolved what I can only call a rule-of-thumb practice, by which definite arrangements are made between each household and the employees. Every household is different — the conditions vary, and often by the accidents of life. Your household may run for three or four months on regular lines, when you can say day by day what the work will be, at what hour it will be done, and what wages will be given. But if an epidemic of influenza happens, you mayfind yourself suffering, or nursing your servants and doing their work, and there is never any reduction in their wages for that time. They are a portion of the household, and are treated as such. It may be the lot of the mistress to be laid aside by sickness, and her portion of the work has to be done, and it is there that the rule of thumb is so valuable, because an arrangement is made by each mistress and each servant, and as servants are very much in the minority, they are quite at liberty to make practically their own terms. If they find, through the exigencies of sickness, that the work is very heavy, you cannot keep them in the house—you have no hold on them. There is an immense advantage for them in that they have nothing to lose. They can sue their employer and get redress, but, no matter how much you may be aggrieved, you cannot sue anyone who has nothing. Briefly, that is our case. I would plead for a continuation of the present system, of each household making its own rules with its own workers. 17. The Chairman.] In other words, you would have domestic servants excluded absolutely from the operations of this Act? —I think, if we met the servants themselves on the Industrial Council, we might come to some mutual understanding. 18. But both parties must be organized bodies to appear before that?—We are in a position to be registered at any moment. Mrs. Rawson: As far as we know, all the good servants are against the union. Miss Holmes: At our last meeting with our chairman, Mr. Bunny said to Mr. Westbrooke, the union's spokesman, that he hoped our sketched rules would amend any grievance, when, to our great astonishment, Mr. Westbrooke said there was no grievance—that he only wished to bring this class of labour into line with the other organized labour of the colony. The Chairman: What was that you said with regard to the domestic servants —that in the main they were opposed to the organization ? Mrs. Rawson: Yes, they are very much opposed to it, because they can see how seriously it will affect them. At present they have many privileges. If they fall ill they receive the same treatment as your own sisters, and they have their visitors The Chairman: You mean to say that they realise that if their bargain was put down in print in black and white, and there was no further connection between the two parties but the cash connection —the cash nexus, as it is called —they would feel themselves more isolated from the household than they are at the present time ? Mrs. Rawson: Yes, it would be a very serious thing. Afc present young girls come right away from their friends and regard the house as their home, and most of them prefer to sit at home at night and do their work. Miss Holmes .- I know one instance where the maid has been twenty-six years with her employers in Wellington, and she has had no other home. The Chairman: That would be rather rare ? Miss Holmes: Yes, because human life would operate against it. Mrs. Rawson: It is not rare for many maids to stop with their mistresses for many years. 19. Mr. Hardy.] I think, Miss Holmes, I understood you to say you would like to meet the servants as experts, so that the matter could, be talked over ?—Yes, I would not have any objection to talking the matter over with them as experts. 20. You would have no objection to them forming a union?— The only objection is that no imaginable set of rules could be made to fit the exigencies of household life, and if you have a union you must have fixed rules. 21. If you have lines it is sometimes necessary to read between the lines?— The lines already exist. 22. Is there dissatisfaction between the mistresses and domestic servants throughout the colony?— No. 23. Can you, as a rule, get sufficient servants?— There are not sufficient. 24. Have you heard that there is any difficulty in getting servants ?—Yes, in the country especially, because the girls prefer the towns. 25. Do you not think that if a union were established a better feeling would probably arise than exists at present?—lt would be infinitely worse. It is through the scarcity of girls. 26. To what do you attribute the scarcity of girls?— Marriage is absorbing a great number every year; then possibly the supply is not large enough, or it may be due partly to the falling-off in the birth-rate. 27. Is the marriage-rate sufficient to account for it? —Yes, when the supply is diminishing. It is perhaps the two causes working together.