TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume XLIX, Issue 14665, 14 May 1913, Page 8

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

The conditions undor Tho which tho London tea-Tea-Shop shop girl has to earn her Girl. livelihood are tho subject of an interesting and informative report by Miss Barbara Drake in the "Women's Industrial News." This report is the result of investigations set afoot by the Investigation Committee of the Women's Industrial Council, and discusses in an illuminating and detailed way the position, life, and wages of tea-shop girls. The place of tho tea-shop waitress in the social scale, tho report considers, is somewhat difficult to fix. More refined than the factory girl, she is said to bo a degree less educated than the shopassistant, and a degree mere independent than the domestic servant. Physical qualifications count for a good deal in this occupation; youth, a good manner, a tall figure, a good constitution, a bright complexion, a sweet smile, sound teeth, and so on, being moro looked for than either previous experience or technical training. It- is interesting to learn that tho waitress is first nnd foremost a "marrying girl." "To tho work-girl of eighteen who means to marry and to marry well," says the report, "the tea-shop has something of the fascination of tho ballroom for the leisured young lady of another cbiss." As for wages, £1 a week, or a kittle over, we learn, is a maximum figure for • the tea-shop waitress, while an average of los net is considered a first-class wage. A more common sum, after the usual Is 6d deduction for the mid-day meal, is 12s, and many adult waitresses earn less. Then, too, there are breakages to be considered, for many firms have the custom of deducting either the cost cf actual breakages, or a regular 2d or 3d a week. The practice of fines for breakages, mistakes, etc., is, however, said to be on the decrease, and the bigger firms have given it up already, as they have also done the custom of making the waitress purchase from her firm caps, aprons, collars, cuffs, and sometimes the whole costume. " The hours aro very long. With the big companies the regular week consists of 55 to 60 hours, while in" somo of the smaller firms the number exceeds 80. Trade unionism is looked on askance by tho tea-shop waitresses as a body. From time to time efforts havo been mado to organise them into a "union, but apparently the waitress is "as sensitive as a schoolboy to the public opinion of her caste," and the trade union, for the present at least, is not considered "good form."

Our readers may remember

No tho account of terrible hardMan's ships endured, some months Land, ago, by the advauco party of

tho Schroeder-Strantz Arctic Expedition in Spitzbergen. Few, however, are likely to know anything much about Spitzbergen, except that it is an island in the Arctic-regions. It is perhaps one of the least-known places in the world, though, as a matter of fact, a very interesting littlo country, as an article by Sir W. Martin Conway in tho May "Windsor" .shows. Altogether Spitzbergen is about the size of Ireland. Its north coast is less than 600 miles from tho Pole, and its west "coast is so washed by the Gulf Stream as to be rendered open to navigation during tho summer season. The country is not entirely ice-bound, for in tho middle there is a belt of country with wide valleys richly clothed with vegetation. Although millions- of birds still nest there, /md seals, walruses and whales wero formerly to bo found in its waters in extraordinary numbers, thus making it a suitable habitation for such peoples as Esquimaux or Samoyedes, Spitzbergen is not and never has been inhabited. Hunters who have long mado it a sort of summer resort have succeeded in exterminating tho whales, and nearly all the seals and walruses. Of late years tourists havo been attracted by tho scenic beauties of tho coast. What astonishes explorers is tho extraordinary complexity cf tho mountain system. "It is as if tho vast area of tho Himalayas were reduced in scale to one-fifth, and wero all brought into visibility from a single summit." says Sir Martin Conway. Travelling in tho interior', it may well be imagined, i s no easy job. You must drag your goods with you on a slcdgo over the most uneven ground. Tho strongest sledges are knocked to pieces in a fortnight, and sometimes they requiro mending even after a couple of days. The glaciers in their lower courso are broken up into towers of ice by intricate labyrinths of crevasses, and inland the winter

snow is turned by the summer thaw into a deep wet sponge, incapable of supporting the slightest weight. This best extends for two or three miles, and through it tho traveller must wade up to his knees or waist in ice-cold slush. Under such circumstances, the cruel hardships endured by Dr. Pilscher and his comrades of the Schtoeder-Strantz advance party can bo readily understood. "Spitzbergen."' says Sir Martin Conway. "i s Britain"in the glacial epoch, ard a journey to that far northern island is like a voyage backwards through some twenty or thirty thousand years to our own native country in the far-distant past."

That much maligned The creature tho goat. 'Toor Man's which has become partCow."' of tho stock-in-trade I of the comic paper. finds a champion in a writer in the "Daily News." He emphasises the ! great, though generally unrecognised ' usefulness of the iroat as a milk-giving ' animal. There is not enough milk to ! bo had in rural England, he says. Tho milk is sent un to the towns, and tho country people themselves often havo to po without. Country children, the children of the men who grow the fowl for the cows, and fc-d the cows, and milk the cows, have to be content with condensed milk, while labourers' families cannot even ret skimmed or separated milk. Now. this, the writer holds, n-ed not be, if the merits of the goat wore more widely known. Tho goat ! is literally the "poor- man's row." It ! does not want luxurious fields of luscious grass: indeed, it would not thrive in (, *t..i It wants exercise -in.i variety in its food. Turn it out by tho roadside and it will hunt round for its own food and keep in good condition. It will eat all sorts of household scraps, from bits of brend to garden waste and potato peelings. All the oats it needs is a mouthful at milkingtime. and as for housing, any small shelter, provided it is dry and well ventilated, suffices. The only existing objection to every needy villager having his gont, the writer pursues, is tho fact that there are not nearly enough milking-goats in Britain to go round. The only goats that aro really profitable, as a rule, are imported ones, and tho Board of Agriculture has imposed a ban on the importations of these animals from Switzerland, Holland, or France, or any other country where goat-keeping is taken seriously. Tho object of this measure is to prevent tho further introduction of foot-and-mouth disease, which is so prevalent on the Continent. The writer argues that these) restrictions on importation should bo removed, a sufficient safeguard being afforded against disease by tho simple process, suggested by the Goat Society, of putting tho animals in quarantine on the other sido of the Channel and keeping them in quarantine on the English side prior to their distribution. It will be many years, wo fear, before tho Goat Society succeeds in convincing English people that the goat is an animal worthy of serious consideration, and the goat supplies milk to as many people in England as it does in some foreign countries. "