DOMESTIC SERVICE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 3, 5 January 1931, Page 6

DOMESTIC SERVICE.

Modern girls have decided that domestic service is "degrading," and at the same time they regard a hospital nurse with respect. Those who know the details of both services are aware that nurses are compelled to perform tasks more "degrading" than any that come within the normal scope of the general servant. It is probably because the nurse has a period of training, Avears an honoured unifdrm, and when nursing privately is liberally paid and treated with consideration, that girls see no "disgrace" in becoming a nurse, yet .shudder at the thought of being a nursemaid, housemaid, parlourmaid, general servant, pahtrymaid or kitckenmaid. They are hesitant about the position of waitress, for that young woman "has her hours," and her superior manners generally, wearing her uniform as a dentist or doctor wears jacket or gown for good and obvious reasons. There are so many labour-saving devices in most households to-day that there is nothing in housework'to distress an active, healthy girl, and there is a keen satisfaction in the results of work well and thoroughly done, when the house and its appointments shine, the family is satisfied, and there has been no -rush to overtake lost time. Each domestic task has its special rewards, which are more real the greater the length of service in one family. A "shifting staff" is not only a.i anxiety to the employer, but 110 good servant is ever made by frequent changes of service. The .maid cannot easily introduce methods she has already learned elsewhere into a "new" household, and habits already acquired interfere with the smooth execution of duties required by the new employer; friction results, and again a change is necessary or enforced. The welfare aud happiness of a family rest upon the shoulders of its domestics. I know of two women who were last year pensioned by their employers after thirty-five years of faithful in the one house. The employers let the lower floor of their home as a flat to obtain sufficient money to pay the voluntary and generous pensions. To-day the food and accommodation provided for a "maid" may be set down ,at something over a pound, and'if twenty to twenty-five shillings a week is paid in wages, and something set aside for insurance, gifts, and holidays, the tot :1 will equal, for each maid, the interest 011 from £1000 to £1500, as much as a modest salary-earning family can afford. With wealthy people in a large house with a full staff and each domestic having special and limited duties, wages are higher, but should, reasonably, be lower, because there is less worry for individual, members of thestaff. The majority of town dwellers need a ."general," a capable, companionable, patient and good-tempered helper, willing to share the work' of the house and take an interest in its occupiers. There is nothing "degrading" about this. To' be accepted as the daily help, friend and adviser of a family for a possible permanency is a more dignified and complimentary position than to be k- soulless, mechanical, temporary assistant in an office, a temporary, and usually unwelcome, nurse in an afflicted house, or a tiredlegged, tray-carrying robot, used by all, remembered by few, in hotel or tearoom. Most women aspire to wifehood. A wife is perforce a "domestic," and if a domestic first and a wife afterwards she will have a greater prospect of comfort and ease and happiness than if she had not had the training. I have known pretty, even beautiful, girls who have been domestic servants, and grrls of education, too," but because unreasoning young women have failed to see any. attraction in the work employers have had to accept anything with two hands and two legs, having 110 ambition beyond food, wages and' a place to sleep, no interest in anything but the street-after dark, and these creatures have discredited the whole service. Domestic work, homemaking, is not drudgery but a very praiseworthy occupation. —H.A.Y.