THE SERVANT QUESTION. TO THE EDITOR.

Evening Post, Volume XXIII, Issue 61, 15 March 1882, Page 3

THE SERVANT QUESTION. TO THE EDITOR.

Si it — "Help" haa endeavoured, with bo much impudent assertion and cool effrontery, to throw discredit on the few remarks I made the other day that I feel compelled to reqneafc the liberty of a reply. One funny feature of this correspondence hna been that some of as do not know each other's sexes, but from the manner " Help " haa unthinkingly assumed a conclusion of her own, and acted on it, and the amount of faith she possesses in her own opinion, I take " Help " to be of the feminine gender. She says all my statements are ridiculous, as proved by the advertisements, etc. Some of my statements are: — "The servants' only stake in the country is hard work for a bare snbBistenoe;" " thoy are entirely at the mercy of their mistresses ;" " thgy fly from service to anything ;" " I shall raise my voioe against being taxed, &o." Take my whole letter from beginning to end, and you will not be able to find any statement in it that oan be answered or affected in the slightest degree by any or all the advertisements in that issue of the paper or any other. " Help's" blind assertion reminds me foroibly of the mad bull iv .the china shop. He sees a number of costly and useful articles before him, but he cannot appreciate them, or distinguish between them, and in his insensate madness makes a olean sweep of the whole lot. If " Help" means by her statement that the "wanted" column of the newspaper proves a dearth of servants, I ask her to oompare the Wellington papers in that respeot with those of any other English-speaking oity of equal population, when the absurdity of her state' mont will be made glaringly apparent, and even if it were tho reverse, it would not affect my argument, for I have not denied the scarcity ; indeed, I tried to explain aome of the causes. As for my statements of fact, thoy are bo uncommonly like what people meet with in daily life, that I oan afford to leave thorn in the hands of your readers. In Bupport of the assertion that some servants keep very large houses in perfeot order for Binall wages, I know of one case in whioh the master, a gentleman with an income of about £1000 a-year, condescended to give the girl away at the altar. Of course, as "Help" says, she was a jewel, the gentleman who gave her away evidently thought bo too, and lean Bay that there are plenty such who can be made, by skilful handling, to work themselves into the state of oripples. All girls are jewels who have been well trained in their childhood and not degraded in their youth, and that is why I do not want to be made a party to setting the machinery of Government in motion for the purpose of degrading and crushing them. They require elevating by being better looked after and treated with more respect and consideration. It will only be when the light shed into their minds by education, and a better example from masters and mistresses shall have influenced them, that they will truly discriminate between pride and Belf-respect, roaentment of oppression and duty. " Help " says : — " Everyone capable of giving an opinion . . . will agree with me ... we want more servants ... and the only way to get them is to import." I have looked up the word "import, and oan only find that goods and wares are imported; "transported," the only word of that group whioh applies to human beings, id used specially in the case of criminals. I)oob "Help" confidor herself an "imported article ?" Is it possible to bring the immigration of human beings under the title of " importod articles ?" The Government of New Zealand has proved that it can import human beings, and all intelligent persons who have witnessed this importation have seen tho disastrous effects of it. In Dunedin, I know, the town was swarming by day with girls of ill-repute, reduced to their state of lifo by the immigration system, and by night they were to be found iv the brothels, in the vessels at the wharves, and in the baohelor halls which sprang up in such numbers about that time : in fact, anywhere that a man could be found who would give them shelter. The Government interference in this matter must always end in the same way, and if the ladies of Wellington are really in earnest in the wish to elevate the standard of servantgirlism, they will get the girls selected at Home by friends whom they can trust to perform that delicate mission ; they will bring them out in smaller batches, not box all the girls up in one small compartment, where the innocent are compulsorily in the continual hearing and company of their bolder companions; they will allow them the company of the male passengers, should there be any on board ; and havo a place that might be called a " Servants' Home " for them to go to when they land. There is one thing more — bring them out under no misrepresentations ; that has been tried in the past and haa proved a lamentable failure. If you cannot got suitable servants to come out on fair representations resign yourselves to tho faot that however New Zealand may appear to offer a