DOMESTIC SERVICE

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 3, 3 July 1926, Page 16

DOMESTIC SERVICE

WHY IT IS UNPOPULAR.

A correspondent of the London "Daily Telegraph" deals very justly and intelligently with the difficult problem of the unpopularity of domestic service, showing that in England the fact of the domestic "living-in" makes her not eligible for a vote, nor for the insurance for unemployment. Thus the service is penalised in England, and the girl who lives-in has a status inferior to the charwoman; and such inequalities are more resented than people in general are aware. Then the writer deals generally with the matter in interesting ' stylo, and says:— "But the main causes of the unpopularity of domestic service go much deeper. It was not the war that was responsible for the domestic service problem; it merely gave a number of women and girls the opportunity of escaping from work they disliked, and on the other hand it gave women who had never done any household work before the chance of proving its fascinations and their own aptitudo for it.

"We must go further back than 1914-1018. The present conditions are really the logical outcome of great economic and social changes, among the most important of which are the Industrial Eovolution, which removed homo industries to the factory; the Education Act of 1870; the introduction of motors and motor-buses, the cinema habit, and the rise of the big department stores. The average housewife does not realise that she must adjust her requirements and hor household arrangements to new economic developments and their resultant psychological conditions.

"The solution of the problem is to raise domestic service to the same level as other occupations. Every calling has a certain amount of drudgery or 'unskilled' work—-when this Becomes 'skilled' work it ceases to he drudgery. Every occupation has ita 'unskilled' workers, its probationers or apprentices; its skilled workers; its managers; and ita organisers. These again differ according to their physical, technical, intellectual, and moral capacity for work. All this affects their wage value; some never rise to be other than unskilled workers, or labourers; some are capable of becoming organisers, or masters and mistresses.

"The way to raise domestic service to the level of other occupations is to train the mistresses. Many who are considered excellent housewives and good cooks are really extraordinary ignorant of the practical conditions of domestic work. As a«wiso woman says: 'Ignorance often causes "places" to be looked on as "bad" or mistresses as "hard." When a lady orders a dinner, and arranges what cleaning is to be done, unless she has a fair idea— and a practical one—of the length of time each item takes, she can easily expect the impossible, and so cause uninterested girls to dislike their work still more. Domestic work can be full of interest, as I have proved, for all through the war I worked in. hospital kitchens, starting as scrubber and scullerymaid and ending as cook-superin-tendent. To the uneducated mina schools are of use only up to a certain point. I have found that so many girls cannot apply to slightly different U3es the things that are taught them.' "All this is so perfectly true. The crux of the whole domestic problem is that the present race of mistresses are not trained in domestic work and domestic administration, and do not pay enough attention to their job. Engineers, hospital matrons, owners of factories, or largo businesses, all have to go through the mill if they wish for a successful career, and the training in these days is getting more and more

specialised. Only the mistress of a household lags behind. The truth is that the interest and importance of the housewife's job have been underestimated of late years, because one by one the traditional household duties have been taken from her by our social and industrial evolution, and educated women have had other ambitions. When the household was self-sufficing, the good housewife was adequately appreciated. She was also very often a highly-cultured woman.

"It cannot be too strongly emphasised that the housewife represents the purchasing power of the nation. She is the principal consumer for whom trade exists; the national prosperity depends not only on her purchases but on the uso she makes of them in the home. Indirectly and direqtly she is the biggest employer of labour. If she does not train herself to administer her own household, and train her own staff, she is placing herself at a disadvantage with the primary producers, manufacturers, and distributors who are her rivals as direct employers of labour; although indirectly the employment they give is dependent on her purchases. If she gives girls a dislike of domestic service she is spoiling one means of their earning their living, and thus upsetting economic conditions. To cope with present conditions,a girl who aims at domestic administrative work should not merely .study household technique practically—cooking, cleaning, etc.—she should also study economics and efficiency principles as applied to factories, and try to apply what she teams to her own home. Detaib of management differ in every household, but basic principles can b* applied with good results everywhere. She must recognise that she has to compote for workers with factories, shops, etc., and that working girls in these days are prejudiced against an occupation which educated women ignore.