THE SERVANT GIRLS HALFHOLIDAY QUESTION.

Hastings Standard, Issue 74, 22 July 1896, Page 3

THE SERVANT GIRLS HALFHOLIDAY QUESTION.

[To thk Editor.] Si!?.—Your Friday'o i-.-uu- contains a htter from " Cynicus " on the Servant Girls Half-Holiday Question from a slave-driver's point as opposed to poor " Bridgets " point of view. I assume that in selecting "Bridget" as a general name for describing the female domestic servant your correspondent desires to be witty at the expense of the hard working faithful Irish peasant girls who form a proportion of that class. lam myself of Irish descent, but I can well ail'ord to pass the hackneyed insult as unworthy of notice. We, the workers, are described by your haughty correspondent as the " failures of life," and are consequently considered worthy of no better treatment than the cattle that feed in the fields. With such sentiments as this emanating from our ficticious aristocracy it is indeed a matter to be thankful for that the working men and women have "the say in managing the, country's affairs" in order to protect themselves and their children from the nineteenth century civil isatsnn of their educated superiors. But are the hewers of wood and dr.twers of watt r failures'? Nobody but a poor narrow-minded untravelled creature like " Cynicus " would dare to so describe, a class who are such, an important factor in our social machinery. I for one, so far from being ashamed of my position, am proud to think that 1 have never eaten the bread of idleness, that lam bluntly honest, that I scorn a mean action and that I feel the keenest sympathy with my fellow creatures; and though those are virtues commended by the churches. lam positive the possession of them is, more than anything else, the cause of men and women being " failures" in the world which is dominated by the class which " Cynicus " represents. My Lite employer recognised no distinction between Sundays and other days, extended not the slightest courtesy to me as a female, and I had to do a large part of the family washing on Sunday. For these and several other reasons winch I will not state, I confess I cannot see wherein lies the superiorities of the class to whom " Cynicus " refers, because I consider myself and the class to which I belong far and away above those I describe, inasmuch its we are a necessary, though perhaps humble, part in the vast social structure and not,like them, a scourge and a menance to society.—l am, ifcc., A QUAXDAJI lIorsEK-EEPEE. Hastings, July 22nd, 1896.