DOMESTIC HELP

Evening Star, Issue 14513, 3 November 1910, Page 2

DOMESTIC HELP

CHINESE LABOR ADVOCATED

[Special go ihe Stau-J

INVERCARGILL, Novombcr 5. Invercargill for the past few years has been suffering from a dearth of domestic servants, and housewives have been _at their wit’s end to obtain domestic assistance. Tho i,rouble appears to bo that girls prefer offices or factories, where they obtain more 'egular hours. “ The absurdity of it is,” said a local labor agent yesterday, “ that if _ they only knew it, girls get better paid in domestic service than in other employments. They won’t realise the position at all, and personally 1 have given up all attempt to make the position clear to them. As to tho remedy, New Zealand is peculiarly situated, in that we have no native population to draw upon. In Africa there is the Kaffir, and in America, the negro and the Chinese. Tho problem mast be dealtwith sooner or litter. We can’t get our town girls, we can’t get our country girls, and we haven’t any native population to draw upon. Looking the question full in tho face, we must get it somewhere. Housewives cannot be expected to rear families and carry on a comfortable home without- some sort of assistance, ‘failing everything else, we might do much worse than import John on the time principle at a fixed rate of wage. 1 believe he will work for 7s 6d to 10s a week, and work well. In two years he could pay off his poll-tax, if approved, or at the end of that time be packed back to China with £7O nr £BO in his pocket, it is only as a last resource that 1 advocate Chinese labor,”

The question has been an absorbing one for years past, and the agent in question is by no means the only one to touch upon the Chinese question.