THE DOMESTIC QUESTION.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIII, Issue 96, 21 April 1909, Page 5

THE DOMESTIC QUESTION.

A WELLINGTON WAIL

[from ottr correspondent.']

WELLINGTON, Tuesday

Amongst the sixty-six "assisted" immigrants by the Arawa, which came in yesterday, were fifteen domestic servants. By this time, I expect, they have all got good billets, for despite the depression, real or alleged, the scarcity of ''helps," as the Yankees call them, is just as pronounced as ever, and the bitter _ wail of the helpless materfamilias still goes up to Heaven. The way in which some of our "maids"—nothing so common as servants nowadays—behave is something little short of scandalous. You advertise for a girl and—if you are lucky— you may be visited by two or three, never more, haughty if_ "h-" less young persons, decked out in expensive if somewhat dragglety chiffons, who put your "missuss^ through a searching cross-examination, the wife's answers being punctuated by contemptuous sniffs. or rude remarks by the young ladies. " 'Ow many children?" "Is the washin' put hout?" "Oh, I reely couldn't go where there's a late dinner"; "Of course I hexpect two afternoons hoff a week and every Sunday from three to ten." "Wot, yer aven't got a gas cooker." "Oh I couldn't think of coming.". "Sixteen shillin's a week did you say; I never take less than a pound. Come on Hemmer, let's be goin', and off she stalks, accompanied by Hemmer, who, during the interview, has been watching the wouldbe employer of her friend^ as if she were some strange specimen of a beetle.

Then, supposing you can satisfy the young lady that you haven't any children, that you rather prefer midday dinners, that you love to be maid-less every Sunday—and on other points—you "engage" the young person, arranging that she's to come on a certain day. You ring up Mrs So-and-So. (I'm supposing you're the wife) and rejoice ecstatically that you can meet her on such and such a day and go and choose that new carpet together, and so on. Mistaken confidence. It's long odds that you'll never see the "engaged' 5 young lady again, that she will, never turn up, that she'll never write, or even telephone that she's not coming. In the meantime perhaps you are offered, and miss the chance, of engaging a really decent, competent girl—and then all the dreary business of advertising, interviewing, and waiting begins anew. To Hades, say I, with the latter-day maid. If there would be one thing which would console me for the severe depression and lack of employment which everyone is predicting for the coming winter it is the thought that a lot of _ lazy, overdressed, impudent and incompetent so-called "domestic helps" may find that they won't be able to get softbillets at a pound a week. Meanwhile wives are over-worked to death, doctors are "busy prescribing for "nerves" and hubbies have a bad time. As for the mothers of large families of young children, Heaven help them, for they simply can't get servants of any kind and at any price. And yet the labour lunatics and mischief-makers howl out against assisted immigrants! Why Wellington alone could absorb 500 decent English girls to-morrow. The lazy, over-dressed and impertinent local girls might be out of a berth, but "serve 'em right says I."