MISTRESS AND MAID.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12070, 13 September 1902, Page 1 (Supplement)

MISTRESS AND MAID.

No. J. [lii MARTHA XV. S. JIYKKS.] We may live without poetry, music, and art: We may live without, conscience and live 7.iout heart; We may jive without friends; we may live without books; But civilised man cannot live without cooks. He may live without books—what is knowledge but grieving'? He may live without hope—what i.3 hope but deceiving? He may live without love—what is pardon but pining? But where is the man that ran live without dining:? So sang the poet—a being believed to thrive more on fancy than on food! And was it not our immortal Tennyson himself who once when dining out declared he liked his "mutton thick!" ... If so the poet, the idealist, how- much more so the commercial, practical paterfamilias? Soulless as it may seem it is none the less a bold, bald fact that the " sanctity of home'' centres chiefly round the kitchen stove. The. heart of man throbs warm and kindly in pretty exact proportion to the quantity and quality of his daily dinner. . . . The responsibility of this highlyimportant function has been in woman's hands from times most primitive Eve and the apple she proffered Adam'. flight we not oh! sisters fair, be yet imparadised had the First Slot but made jam of that fatal apple? There it is, far back in Biblical times, domestic discord for lack of a cook! And yet we women boast of our progress. By eternal ineptitude we are but repeating history. So far back that archives record them not " down the ringing grooves of change," has come the sound of weeping and wailing over the knotted problems of domestic service. The wail of the servant is over the land. Confined to no country, peculiar to no race nor nation nor sect nor creed; not. local nor geographical, but universal, wide-reaching to the remotest corners of the earth, has spread the contagion— servantgal it is. Appendicitis is a tare. a curable, a mildly-digestive joke in comparison. For* so general and persistent a. disease there must be an antitoxic remedysome relief, some method of eradication "and improvement. The probing lancet will pierce the very nerves, of industrialism and social economics. It is woman who will squirm. Since she created the bogie known as the. Servant Question it- is( she who must slay it. Popular opinion is against her, as well as the history of the whole movement, from its most, primitive beginnings in bungling, benighted savagery, to the present vexatious, complicated chaos. Half' of humanity— big male halfdismisses it scornfully as "women's work," supposed to be of a simple and easy nature. This, a. combination involving the practical application and interaction of science, art, and craft! This "simple and easy" forsooth ! The life of the family, with all that it means to the life of the nation, is absolutely dependent on the household life. Whether we live or die, and how we live or die, tire largely determined by our household condition. The woman is the home, as the home is the nation. And yet woman, progressing with high promise up every other avenue of human advancement, remains in the discharge of this most vital trust and solemn duty in a deplorable condition of indifference and inertia. It is this atrophy that bars the way to tho intelligent co-ordination of household labours, which, if comprehended and classified, can be placed on a level with the ABC of sciences. That it is something reducible to forms, to system, and to be studied as a science as a dreary series of tasks, vague, never-ending, all-pervad-ing— demonstrated by those thoughtful, capable xv*bmeu who shine like serene planets in tho firmament of spasmodic, fussy, little twinklers. These " fussy little twinklers'' themselves, incompetent or indolent, oft-times irresponsible and frivolous, are the sufferers of chronic servaut-galitis. From them issues the whine and the wail against poor help and the killing worries of housekeeping. They complain because they fail in pressing their own responsibilities on the narrow shoulders of a disinterested, untrained maid. Shirking the duty which is theirs they loudly abuse the scapegoat of a servant, and ignore the fact that the mistress is "the man at the wheel," who should direct- domestic discipline and define the household policy on much the same lines of an organised system of work that holds sway in every successful business man's office. A —home—is the wife's business office, calling for as much thought, method, and management from a. woman's standpoint and capacity as are required in the. discharge of a man's industries and interests.

It is not the drudgery of the day's work to be gotten through with in any old slipshod, hit-or-miss, lick-and-a-piomise way, and treated -with contempt, tinged with pity, as mere woman's work. For right here lies the trouble. We must elevate the status of domestic work. We must remove that false supposition—tradition it really is, dating from pre-historio times when all such labour was performed by slaves and badly paid—that domestic Fervice is degrading.

Domestic service does not occupy the high status to which it is entitled," for the simple reason that servants are untrained. And servants are untrained because mistresses are untrained. . . . The advanced cry is tor "Domestic Training Schools," lor "Technical Classes." By all means establish them everywhere! "But send mistresses as pupils first. Servants then will never need the training. They will be taught by precept ami example. . . . System, intelligent organisation, and some standard of excellence will stamp oat the confused, defective, messy methods that prevail to-day. On the oiled wheels of a systematised plan will run the intricate machinery of domestic science.

Mistresses, thus modelled, will rightly regard housekeeping— (better, brighter term ') —as a wisdom, not a worry ; a pleasure, not a penance. It is to the educated classes—the housekeepers—we must look to raise the dignity of domestic service. A proper pride in the work, a just appreciation of its power and influence, a. basis of responsibility and respect emanating from the mistress will communicate itself to the maid, thus creating an atmosphere of mutual harmony and co-operative interests. A good mistress invariably makes a good maid. . . . Then the comic-paper joke anent the maid's demand for a reference, " a character," from the prospective mistress will not seem such a far-fetched inquiry after all, since every self-respecting servant will realise the importance of her mistress' capabilities.