DIGNIFIED SERVANTS

Evening Star, Issue 22685, 26 June 1937, Page 25

DIGNIFIED SERVANTS

In an effort to try and improve the status of servants, and so persuade a better type of girl to adopt a domestic career, a woman s society in London recently decided to adopt the term “ domestician.” This may, or may not, have the desired effect, but there is one country where domestic service is regarded as an honoured career, and _ whose girls make the best servants in the world. That is Norway. . The Norwegian girls have their own trade union, which looks after their interests, and a domestic servant is as much a person of consequence as a shop employee or a factory hand. Naturally domesticated, the Norwegian is trained from early years in the art of housewifery, with the most up-to-date appliances, for water power makes electricity so cheap in Norway that they often do not turn off the public room, lights in the daytime, and every little farmhouse has its electrical equipment. Tho Norwegian girl is ambitious, and her Mecca is the United States, where tho Scandinavian servant obtains the best wages and living conditions in the world. Many go to England and work for board and nominal wages in order to learn the language, and London and the big provincial cities each have their little Scandinavian colony. Last year the Norwegian servants petitioned their Government to grant them a 10-hour day, exclusive of mealtimes, all other time to be paid as overtime. They are also paid, board wages for a fortnight’s holiday annually, and have their time off and pay fixed by local boards. They are not haughtily demanding, or humble, but have a proper appreciation of the value of their work to the community, and pride in a job well done.