No Servant Problem

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 204, 26 May 1938, Page 5

No Servant Problem

American Housewives Do Not Have To Worry GOOD HELP EASY TO FIND AND KEEP A MERICAN women are puzzled greatly by the accounts of servant trouble in England which are being brought to the U.S.A., writes Marion Ryan, in a recent “Daily Telegraph and Morning Post.” They have always regarded England as a Mecca for housewives, with maids willing to do any amount of work at a low wage and often in uncomfortable quarters, while they themselves had to pay £3 or £4 a week for a good general servant. All that is changed now. The depression Of 1929 readjusted the American servant question, which used to be a topic of conversation at any tea or bridge party. One can get all the servants wanted and ar far more reasonable wages, and the maids one gets are, as a rule, more capable than those in England. The maid most in demand is the general worker, who does all the housework, cooks extremely well, does all the light washing and can manage a dinner for six or eight people, cooking and serving it herself, even making the cocktails. Sometimes a cleaning woman comes in once or twice a week or the mistress of the _ household helps with dusting and bed-making. Most general servants live in, but occasionally they prefer to share a fiat with another girl or they are married women whose husbands start out to work early and come in late. They are of all nationalities, English. Irish. Austrian, German, Swedish and French, but never American, unless one counts the great number of negroes who go out as servants. The white American. however poor she is, will not become a servant. The only places you find them are in small towns and villages, and they are regarded as part of the family, working very well, but quite as an older sister would. They must be treated as equals. Mistress Docs Training. SPHERE have been many training schools started for servants in the U.S.A., but they have never been particularly successful tor the reason that the American woman is so good a housewife that she can train a servant

herself. She is very house-proud, so no signs of careless sweeping and dusting escape her. and American home cookery is probably better as or good as any in the world. If she is left suddenly servantless, she can turn to and manage until She gets another maid. And many a young woman takes care of her own little flat entirely, cooks delicious meals, and then dons a charming gown and a careful make-up and goes off to a dance.

Many such housewives have come from luxurious homes and have never been taught the rudiments of housewifery ; others from simpler homes have helped their mothers out in emergencies and learned from them. Others have gone to training schools for brides-to-be and learned cookery and housework.

But, whatever the ease, there is no doubt that the American woman is an instinctive housewife That has probably come down to her from the days when gently-bred girls of all nations followed their husbands to the great New World and fount! that they had to work as they had never dreamed of working; cook and wash and scrub and rear their children with little or no help.

She is now on the crest of the wave. A good servant of any kind is easy to find and keep, and wages do not make dreadful inroads into her housekeeping money. She has never found home life easier than it is now,.