DOMESTIC SERVICE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 112, 13 April 1936, Page 11

DOMESTIC SERVICE.

PROBLEMS IN AMERICA. Interesting information on what she i terms'one oi me most urgent proDlems! oi American . housewives was given by Mrs B. Morrison, wiio passeu tnrougn Auckland by tne Monterey en route io uer Home in ban Francisco (says an .~nd exchange), iuis Morrison said that in the Umteu Stales there was an mcreasing reluctance on the part of American women to accept domestic service in a home not tneir own n they could pjssibly una any otner employment., x'art 01 the uiiticuity in ootaining uomestic service arose, in iuis Morrison s opinion, .iiom the mimigration restriction which .aid lovveiea the nuinuer 01 loieign workers, and partly from the tact that. American yirts did not like to work in the nomes ol others.

With the object of discovering and, if possible, eliminating the reasons why American girls were reluctant to become domestics, the Sail T'raucisco Centre CatilOrnia League of vVomen Voters, of which Mrs Morrison is a member, had set up a committee to investigate the position. This investigation, said Mrs Morrison, was carried out by systematic interviewing of both housewives and maids, by employment agencies, both public and private, and by the circulation of a comprehensive questionaire. By this means it was discovered that as conditions were at present there was much to support the young girls’ ■ dislike of domestic service. The main inadequacies lay in the absence of a minimum wage and maximum hour scale. In household work, it appeared there was not, as for women in industry, any provision for definite hours, for a minimum wage, or for accident insurance or unemployment compensation. Furthermore, said Mrs Morrison, it was discovered that in many instances living conditions for maids were far from adequate. They had very little free time for their own private employment and no reasonable provision for vacation. On the strength of its investigations, the committee had recently drawn up for the consideration of tiie community a list of recommendations in an endeavour ,to help solve the problem which at present was vexing both maids and mistresses, said Mrs Morrison. The recommendations of the committee had as far as posposible taken into consideration the requirements of both the housewife and the maid and had suggested that when a workable method ol administration should be evolved the* present unemployment compensation law in the United States should, be extended to include domestic employees. LIVING CONDITIONS AND HOURSrt The question of living conditions, according to the recommendations, could ue solved by furnishing the household worker with a private bed-sitting room in which she could receive her own visitors. The working hours as suggested would comprise five days of 10 hours each. In the remaining time the worker would be quite free oi any responsibility to her employer, and receive, in addition, three free evenings a week. Such considerations as overtime wages, minimum wages, with a reduction in hours to suit a reduction in wage, were also dealt with by the recommendations, which suggested further that an annual fortnightly vacation on salary should be given to every employee.

In discussing the findings of the committee, Mrs Morrison said that while the United States catered so adequately and so enthusiastically lor the training of women in all branches of home science and home economics, presenting this work in its most pleasing and scientific aspects, the average American woman, paradoxically, did so little to encourage the practical use of such training. Unless domestic employees were "treated with the intelligent consideration that the various instruction schools entitled them to the value of these schools established all over the United States in an endeavour to encourage domestic service as a scientific profession was entirely negligible. The domestic employee, said Mrs Morrison, was entitled to a life of her own and to the consideration that was shown to employees in industry. There had always been too great a tendancy to treat the domestic employee as the personal property of the household rather than as an individual and as a follower of the greatest and most necessary of women’s professions.