DOMESTIC TRAINING SCHEME.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 144, 19 June 1923, Page 8

DOMESTIC TRAINING SCHEME.

I *- ■ i FOR UNEMPLOYED WOMEN. OF USE TO NEW ZEALAND. (B our Woman Correspondent.) LONDON, May 1. Scenes ill the House allegedly more rowdy than ever known resulted from the Government's refusal to deal with the case of unemployed men. Writing as a woman, this fact presents its ironies, l for there is much more unemployment among women than among men. There are indeed no fewer .than a quarter of a million registered unemployed women and that is much less than the actual number. Vet there arc no riots in the house over their wrongs! One is, of course, at once confronted •by the traditional assertion —women can always find a job—in domestic service. And to this the harassed housewife, wrestling with her twenty-four-hour (lay job, crying out for that help which never conies, will lend her voice. The world over the cry goes up. Give us servants. The plight of the English housewife is indeed not far from being worse than that of hor sister wives and mothers overseas, .lust as in the Dominion it is the house which can at best only run to one domestic help which is finding the sources of supply steadily drying | up. It is a fact that there are actually fewer homes in England to-day with one general servant than there were before the war. in spite of our growth and population. It is a stale story that young women to-day prefer tho hardest, most disagreeable work in a factory at low wages, and perennial risk of unemployment, to a steady job with decent accommodation and food, the factor which outweighs comfort and security, being liberty, and I if every housewife put herself in these young women's place, would she blame them? The movement of women into factory work had set in well before the war. Munition factories gave it a hefty push onward. It became abundantly clear, not immediately after the armistice, but when the war boom chopped to slump, that the debacle had come for women who bad swarmed into the factories. THE WORK UNDERTAKEN. -Something had to be done, and the work was undertaken by the Central Committee for Women's Training. The task the Committee set itself was to plan how to convert intodomestic helpers as quickly and as effectively as might be, girls—often rough and uncouth, just because they had spent their days in the midst of noisy machinery, and dn dirty surroundings, and who many of them lived in overcrowded houses which gave them no opportunities for seeing, let alone learning, the domestic arts. The committee decided on giving a 13-week intensive training in homecrafts to unemployed factory girls who would undertake, on its completion, to go into domestic service, and while there have been failures, it must be conceded that the scheme can register many successes. In search of competent opinion on the efficiency of the training, I called on Miss Hanlon, head of Domestic Servants' Department, at New Zealand House. Miss Hanlon had been at pains to visit, without previous notice, the committee's training centres, both in Scotland and England, and so impressed was she with the efficacy of this training that, l were she un search of a maid herself, she would not hesitate to employ one of the trainees of the C.C.W.T., so she asserted. This, after all, is the best test. The scheme of training does not pretend to turn out finished domestics, but it does give a girl who has no knowledge whatever of how a house should be run a chance of seeing something of proper methods. It should be remembered that war conditions pushed into factory work many who otherwise would have gone into domestic service, and, once taken away from it and having tasted the sweets of liberty, and every evening out, they are loathe to go into it. The scheme set on foot by the Central Committee has at least brought back to the home some who would never have been secured again. CRITICISM. OF THE SCHEME. There has been in Parliament and in ■ the Press more than a little criticism of the scheme. On the other hand, the Labour Party is inclined to resent what it regards as pressure" put on women, ; simply because they are of the working class, to go into domestic service. But the party is, on the whole, in favour of what it sees is a good training, and docs make those who obtaiin it more effective workers, and thus more valuable to themselves and to the community. On the other hand, the Middle Classes' Union, erstwhile satellite of Horatio Bottomley, has been getting excited at '• what it calls a waste of public money quite blind to the fact that if it is a waste it is a waste on miiddle-class , homes, since it is they which ultimately will benefit by the increased and bettertrained supply of domestics. The money ; for the scheme is dcriv6d in -equal parts from the Treasury and from a war fund set aside to help unemployed women who suffered through the war, and the hAj fact that a Conservative Govern- | ment is itself proposing to support the I scheme still further ds evidence enouo-h that the Middle Classes' Union and the newspapers who made a stunt of its I campaign against the scheme, have made I a mistake. Their silence, now of some duration, argues that they are seem* reason. b SUPPLY FOX THE DOMINIONS. It may be asked is there anything in thss training scheme for the DominionsV For New Zealand it would appear to have a great attraction as proving a source of supply. The terms already granted to domestics by the New Zealand Government arc so generous that it would be unfair to take these trainees when others are only accepted who have had full two years' experience in domestic service. The fact that NewZealand n's alw-ays able, by virtue of its attractive climate, its social amenities and its free-passage scheme —a concession given by no other Dominion —to pick and choose among candidates possessing two years' domestic service experience appears to make any recourse to this training scheme unnecessary. But New Zicaknil is nothing, if not enterprising and ready to test every new idea; and Miss Hanlon, impressed by two of the trainees she saw at a London centre, engaged them. She awaiits the result with some interest, more especially as they go to posts at Government House. CANADIAN EXPERIMENT?"" " Canada, too, has been experimenting, and I have just seena letter from one of the committee's trainees, who had | gone there after some domestic servioo to the head of a training centre. The girl said: "I am getting on very well out here, and am very contented and happy. The cows and I did not get along very well together, so I left my j cousin's farm.and secured a -job-in the Ijpwn .lwe calj, it a, j,ownj although the

population is only five hundred), with a very nice family, mother, father and four children; the eldest is five and the youngest ten months, three boys and one gill. lam treated as one of the family, and the work is equally divided between Mrs. — and myself. The baby is my chief care, I bathe, feed, and air him, and be sleeps in my room. '"Housework is done on a very different scale; first there are no fireplaces to clean, as the "houses are built with furnaces in the cellar for central heating, and as Cookstown has no waterworks, there are no taps or sinks to clean. We have a hard and soft water pump out in the garden, all the floors downstairs are polished hardwood, and for carpets and rugs and hangings upstairs there is an electric vacuum cleaner. The whole town is supplied with hydro power generated from the falls of Niagara, and is very cheap; the cooking is all done by coal oil or electricity, and it is such a clean way of doing things. "I had a pleasant disappointment when I arrived. I thought there would be frame shacks and log cabins, but, 1 haven't seen either yet, as all the houses here are red brick or blocked cement. I get a homesick feeling sometimes, hut everyone is so happy that I soon get over it. '"I realise now what a lot I learnt during the thirteen weeks' training I was lucky enough to have." HAPPY AND CONTENTED. A second letter from, this girl is illuminative: "I was ever so pleased to I get a letter from you. It is very kind of you to take such a kind interest in mc. lam ever so happy and contented, and very seldom get homesick. '"Mrs. and I are really chums, she does not reat mc like a paid help. She has written to mother and auntie several times, and they do not worry over mc at all now. I am doing my best to bring baby up properly. I bath him night and morning, feed him every four hours, and put him to bed at six o'clock I awake, and leave him to go to sleep without being rocked." What this trainee says gives in a few words the whole secret of contented domestic help. If the English mistress would realise that servants are human, with human views of fellowship with her own people, of recreation and would have some sympathy with her outlook on life, there would be less of a rush away from domestic service in this Old Country.