IMPORTED LABOR.

Evening Star, Issue 12767, 21 March 1906, Page 6

IMPORTED LABOR.

THE NAVVY AND DOMESTIC PROBLEM. [Special to the Stak.] AUCKLAND, March 21; • Interviewed upon the action of the High Commissioner in accepting 200 navvies as emigrants for New Zealand at reduced passages and offering to send out 100 domestic servants on the same terms, Mr R. F. Way, a well-known Labor leader, admitted that tier© was a greater demand than supply in both cases. There waß, however, i?e said, objection on the part of a number of navvies to these men being brought out, as they contended there are plenty of laborers to do all that is required. The way he looked at it was this: As railway works in hand were stopped large numbers of men would be thrown out of work. Instead of going at this thing in a bombastic way, the matter ought to De carefully weighed beforehand, so that injury would not be done to those being brought out and already here. Speaking on the servant girl question, Mr Way said that mistresses themselves were to blame for the insufficient supply. Tbey seemed to regard the servant girl as a sort of automatic machine, who could get up at daybreak, do the housework, cook meals, nurse baby, and do \raisbing, with a little'ironing thrown in, and then retire to rest when all were slumbering. He did not say that this was the experience of every servant girl, but it was the fate of most of them. When one considered the fact that a New Zealand girl could work in a factory for eight hours and have a little enjoyment in life afterwards, it was not to be wondered at that she did not nm into the arms of a mistress in order to make herself a slave from daylight to dark. If those who desired servants -were more considerate towards thean and looked upon tbem as human beings, then the average girl who went to get her living would much prefer domestic duties. If they imported domestic servants, those girls in a' short time would realise they could enjoy much better conditions by selling their services for .eight hours to the manufacturer and others. The importation would not settle the difficulty. Where the real remedy lay was in the altered attitude of mistresses. There were some cases where a servant was condemned almost like a. prisoner to have her meals amidst- the sordid surroundings of pots and pans and kitchen tables, whilst the mistress was airing her bad English before her guests in the parlor. A good many of the mistresses who growled about the failure to get servants had sprung from the same rank, and their only conception of how to treat other servants was to make their lives as intolerable as possible.