DOMESTIC HELP PROBLEM

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 105, 31 October 1923, Page 6

DOMESTIC HELP PROBLEM

The problem of providing sufficient and competent help for the home appears to 'be quite as difficult of solution in Great Britain as it is in New Zealand. So much was made clear in the evidence recently given before a Special Committee appointed by the Ministry of Labour to inquire into the matter, and referred to in the cablegrams to-day. Much of that evidence was interesting and much, too, was irrelevant, even fantastical. Now the Committee has reported. It recommends, inter alia, instruction of schoolgirls in domestic science, with provision of scholarships for those who desire to pursue some special course; provision of unemployment benefits for domestic workers, with pensions up to 15s per week; votes for statutorily qualified women domestic workers ; promotion by institutions and private persons of social, recreational, and educational advantages for female domestic workers"; and "upholding the dignity of domestic service as a skilled and honourable profession." All this is most interesting, but it conveys very little comfort to the harassed and overworked housewife and mother. So far as experience in New Zealand goes, the spirit if not actually the letter of the principal recommendations of the Committee is given effect to. Domestic science, if in the main it means instruction in cooking and needlework, is taught to schoolgirls; every woman of 21 and upwards has a vote; and there is no lack of private and public effort to meet the social, recreational, and educational needs of young women in domestic as in other occupations.

All the time there is far more work of a domestic kind to be done in New Zealand than there are suitable women to do it there does not appear to be any present necessity for instituting an unemployment pension scheme for domestic workers. As for the upholding of the dignity of domestic service as a skilled and honourable profession, that surely rests with the employee as well as with the employer. The plain truth is that girls in New Zealand, as is apparently the case at Home, prefer teaching, office, or similar work (if they come from the high schools) ; failing that, then work in a shop, and failing that, work in a factory. They choose these outlets for their activities any time and all the time, rather than taking up domestic work. Education in New Zealand is not only free and compulsory, but its higher branches are easily come by, and the girls who acquire it will, quite naturally, fight shy of domestic work, even in their own homes, much more so in the homes of others. High wages and easy conditions of employment have been tried in New Zealand, but they have not so far absolutely ensured capable and trustworthy domestic service. Bringing young women out pas-sage-free from Home as domestic servants for some at the expense of the general taxpayers has not, so far as we can see, had any appreciable effect on increasing the quantity and improving the quality of domestic help in New Zealand. The, causes for the really critical shortage of domestic help in Great Britain as well as in New Zealand are manifold, even mysterious, and they seem to be beyond the reach of those who study them to find a practical solution of the problem.

Whatever the cause or causes may be, there is. no doubt whatever of the deplorable effects of the increasingly insufficient supply of competent domestic labour upon the mothers of New Zealand, especially those with young families. Many of them are making a valiant but heartbreaking, fight to save the home as a social institution. Medical men know full well how and what they are suffering in their efforts. Very few of them, if they have girls of their own at a handy age, can count on help from them, for the children are off to school soon after eight; and when they come home they have from two to three hours' school work to do ready for next morning. How best to deal with this difficult but nowvery grave problem of sufficient and better domestic help we frankly confess we do not know. Giving effect to the recommendations of the Domestic Service Committee may ease some, but we do not think will entirely dispose of all the difficulties. At the moment the utmost that can be hoped for is t'nu.l tiuiiljllqd itiothura, iov the suka of their, own girls who

may become mothers, will give their children as thorough a. grounding as possible in that kind of practical domestic science that cannot be taught in the school, so that when the girls are put to it they will not be at the mercy of chance, probably incapable and, what is almost as bad, "temperamental" help.