THE SERVANT GIRLS HALFHOLIDAY QUESTION.

Hastings Standard, Issue 75, 23 July 1896, Page 3

THE SERVANT GIRLS HALFHOLIDAY QUESTION.

"To the Editor.] Stti, —Your correspondents deserve credit for their plea on behalf of country hoi mi but as one who knows wh: 1 i writing about I think it wo ill 1 l ora appreciated if we were all e h holiday on Sunday afternoon, thus giving us an opportunity of getting to church. I don't know whether it is the same all over Xi v.- Zealand, but in certain homesteads in Hawke's l>ay the servant is treated little better than the cattle. She is supposed to be at work at six in the morning in winter, and at five in summer, and her work i< seldom done before ten at night. If I were to enumerate some of the duties to be done during the day I would not be believed. After work she retires to her rcom, but not to rest. She lias charge of two or three of the children, perhaps all suffering from the croup, and -he --fldom gets any rest. She has a master who would like ail years to be leap years so that he could crush another day out of her and a mistress who is kindness itself but who dare not take tip the cudgels of the servant. With the master it is a crime for a woman to be ill, and she must stand up to her work through trying times to the injury of her health. She lives miles away from her neighbours, and never sees any female friend to converse with, and in a few months she leaves a thorough wreck. If the Legislature is to interfere let them restrict the hours of labor, allow certain Sunday afternoons eft", and attempt to palliate the suffering of the poor domestic. Hood's Song of the Shirt did a lot of good to the poor seamstresses of England ; let the Standard see what it can do for the poor country worker. Remember, all the fiinns in the district are not as bad as the one in which I had the misfortune to cast my lot, and I am told that some of the situations are pleasant ones, but I pity the girl who has a brute for an em'ployer, and I can assure you that there are some men worse than brutes holding small areas of land in Hawke's Bay.—l am, etc., Domestic. [To THE EdITOK.] Sib.—As one who employs a considerable number of servants, male and female, and as one who, born in a superior position in the Old Country, has had a large experience of servants and their ways, I am forced to say that menials in this colony are sadly deficient in respect for those placed by Providence above them. In England, where servants are kept in their proper position with a firm hand, where the barrier existing between master and servant is, and rightly so. impassable, one rarely hears of this restlessness under restraint which the colonial familiarity between mistress and servant engenders. It is ridiculous for any one to say that as a rule servants are treated like a lower creatiom—that is merely a catch word to excite sympathy wit-h an insolent and undeserving class as the colonial servants are. We desire to treat them kindly and considerately, but we cannot and will not pay them for choosing their work, and if in the colony they will not render the outward and visible marks of respect lika the well trained servants at Home we at least insist upon a semblance of the acknowledgment of our position. The root of all this subversion of society is that the working men and women of the eolony are pampered by a servile Government —they receive a distorted education and, unlike their faithful hstrdy fathers and mothers, have little or no acquaintance with good, wholesome hard work which gave them sufficient to think of without aping their superiors. This Half - Holiday innovation is the only thing required to turn the poor silly head of " Mar)- Ann," already she drosses, I won't say as well as, but certainly often mora expensively than her mistress, speaks to her as an equal, and often even joins in the family circle's conversation ! (I have seen this). Now, I have no manner of doubt she will insist on having the carriage round to take her out on her " 'arf 'oliday," and tell her mistress to have tea ready for her and a few friends at 5.30 sharp. Take my word for it, the master and servant were both better off in the old days when the one exacted and the other received the proper homage due from a vassal, when tacit obedience to their superiors was the basis of their education, before French, music, and drawing were considered a necessary preparatory to scrubbing floors and blacking boots, and before servant girls' half-holidays were introduced to upset colonial households, and strain the hitherto agreeable relations existing between mistress and servant. —I am, &c., A Lady. Hastings, 28cd July, 1886.