DOMESTIC SERVICE

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LVIII, Issue 70, 3 September 1937, Page 5

DOMESTIC SERVICE

SUGGESTED SOLUTION OF

PROBLEM.

BETTER PAY AND STATUS

(From The Guardian's Special Corres-

pondent—By Air Mail)

LONDON, August 14

A way of solving the everlasting "servant problem" is suggested by Mr Ernest Schofield, who is now busy organising a Domestic Servants' Exhibition in London. He wants to give servants an eight-hour day, pay them £3 or £4 a week, and raise them to the social status of nurses.

"I am convinced," he said this week, "that if servants were trained in schools they would be able to do most jobs about the house in half the time. My idea is that one efficient girl would be able to get through a whole day's work in a morning and would be able to work somewhere else in the afternoon. She could cook a dinner in one house, clean rooms in another, and look after baby in yet another.

"Housewives would no longer be troubled by the servant problem; they would get almost as good service for their money and the servants would benefit. Not that they should be called servants. Girls dislike the name because they think it is undignified. Why shouldn't they be called 'home-tenders'? At present girls are paid about 4gd an hour. If this new idea was successful they should earn far more than that— anything, up to £4 a week. And why shouldn't the daughters of professional men take up the calling? After all, keeping a house in order is one of the most honourable of all jobs."