NAZI WOMEN

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 108, 3 November 1937, Page 26

NAZI WOMEN

SHORTAGE OF SERVANTS

CLASS-CONSCIOUS MAIDS

Women who want to enjoy the services of maids first must have a number of children before they can employ triem, if the plan of Fritz Nonnenbruch of the official Nazi .'paper, • the "Voelkischer Beobachter," is accepted, writes Sigrid Schultz from Germany for the "Chicago Tribune." The journalist believes that servants. should be rationed according to the number of children in' a family. The "productive", families would receive preference, the same as metal workers are doled out to factories because of the lack of skilled workers.

For the first time in years a shortage of servants exists in, Germany. ■■' No longer can a hausfrau commandeer the services of a hai'd-toiling maid for 5 dollars or 10 dollars a month. She must pay net servants between 20 dollars and 30 dollars a month each.

Maids have become class conscious. They no longer rank as servants, but as "household assistants." A maid in a good Nazi household is regarded as an "older sister" by the children of her employer.

The number of girls available for household jobs is declining partly because many girls enter Nazi "voluntary labour camps" or because, due to the marriage dowries granted them by the Government, they get married early. LOW BIRTH-RATE. But the primary reason for the shortage is the low war and post-war birthrates, which reduced the number of young persons ready to start work by more than a million. The average birth-rate at the turn of the century was more than two million; in the war years it dropped to less than a million. In 1936 it barely reached the 1920-30 average of 1,300,000. The servant problem should be used to help raise the birth-rate, Nonnenbruch suggests.

"The increase in birth rate is even more important than the increase in the production of goods," he says. "We honour the mother of many children. But the children do not belong to the mother alone. They belong to the nation." In order to help the mother to bear and rear children she should be granted special household help, the writer advocates.

Tax'concessions were granted to big families in 1933. Now Nonnenbruch says a maid's wages should be paid by the "National Community" in cases where the mother of a large family is not able to pay the wages herself. J (