NOW, THE SERVANT-MAN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13455, 6 April 1907, Page 1 (Supplement)

NOW, THE SERVANT-MAN.

B" TonuNGA.

The protest of the man who works against L the woman who takes work from him has 1 at last been heard by the gods that govern economic "conditions. As u. sign, in Marvellous Melbourne, which is a city by Yarra, tho unblest, an opening has been 1 j found by men in the very vocations which I women have left behind them. Not only iin the dining-rooms and kitchens of restaurants and hotels, but in the domestic work' of hotels and private houses, the servantman has found hi;: billet. A housewife j I need no longer wear her heart out fori ,Mary who cometh not ; she can put a little j advertisement in the morning paper and j | get her bedrooms done up, her drawing-1 room swept, her kitchen attended to. and l ithe doorstep scrubbed, by Mary's brother, jJohn. j We have always imagined that domestic; work was specially ordained for women j • from the primeval time when Mary's an-1 cestress stayed 111 the cave to keep the i !tire in while John's ancestor fought the ! mastodon as to which of the two should i j have the other for supper. Which quesjion, by the way, could hardly have been , | referred to an arbitration court, any more than can the very similar question as to] | whether Britisher or Asiatic s'«all have ' Australasia. But it appears that this idea • of special ordination is one of the great myths. At any rate, it is claimed in Mel- , bourne that John is miles ahead of Mary as a domestic. * Listen to what they say, and let abashed woman hide her head! The supply of hoys and men trained in domestic duties is by 110 means equal to the demand. It is found that, they dc their work much quicker than girls. Two boy* can, as a rule, take the places of three girl#, and the former receive from 10s to 12s per week. Boys from 18 to 20 years are preferred, and the general opinion is that they are far less trouble than gills, and do not I want to go out so much. And this is Melbourne, and these men and .I boys are white, all white, and Australian, not the snuff-coloured men and boys whom we commonly think of us makers of beds and sweepers of carpets. They were not l bred in Madras or Japan or China, but ini j Victoria and in England and some possibly |in New Zealand. It shows the capacity of our race—does it —and the superiority of the masterful male, The solution |of the servant-girl problem evidently lies in the evolution of the servant-man. i And why not? There is no industrial problem which is not wholly an economic | problem, for Labour, like Capital, will go any way and do any thing if you only offer it sufficient inducements, One great authority has said that for live per cent. Capital will take no risks, for ten per cent, I many risks, and for 100 per cent, any I risk" that can be imagined- Similarly, Labour wants an easy time for 10s per week and board ; while for 100s per week ! it will go to Klondyke or stoke coal in a I filibustering steamer, whose owner is making jluj per cent, per annum. You can get' Labour, white. Labour, in a kitchen or on j the Hand, ii you will only offer it inducement enough, as anybody can calculate who can figure out that two and two make four, j But the woman seemed net to like domestic | service and Its conditions, and so to require] bigger pay lor less work than the average j housewife could manage to pay. And in; the nick of time along comes man to the rescue, in Melbourne, and proves that this j is the best of all possible worlds. Woman | simply has no chance against him, man or boy, at house work, we are told. He works better and works for less—which is the solution of all economic problems. They are quicker than girlsboys are. They "are "far less trouble than girls;" boys are. They "do not want to go out so much; boys don't. In fact, when you hear how- good they are in Melbourne, you wonder why we have put up with girls for so long, and why those girls who have been mistress of their situations until the nominal mistress feels like changing places , with them and handing over to them her house and her husband and her troubles and her children and all that she has, and starting in as her own servant- in order to be in command of her own household, do not all get a week's notice in the morning. But you understand things'when • you perceive "the usual little difficulty. Un- . fortunately for the immediate present the i supply of these model young men " is by j no means equal to the demand.'" 'Twas j 1 ever thus- Always in the finest ointmenti • is found the largest fly. ■, But in the light of Melbourne's experi- > ence the sorelv-tried housewife need no i longer sorrow as one who has no hope. I "'For the notion that only women and girls] " could do domestic work has gone, vanished, • evaporated. It was a mistake and a/delu- . sion and a snare. There are no such things •as man's work and woman's work. There ' is just one sort of work, which can be done by either sex equally well. That is ■ the great lesson of the age. s The foolish old world jogged along, , thinking differently. It turned women out of the coal-pits and has been trying to turn them out of the hotel bars, and sometimes it succeeded, because woman was so busy in turning men out of other places that she really didn't worry about losing a job or two. She started in to be lawyer and doctor, waitress and machinist and i|tailoress. She took to clerking as a duck . to green peas, and when once she got be- ■ hind the counter the poor salesman could i hardly get over it, out of her way, quickly i enough. She slipped into the schools and i has made the wide world ask what is becoming of the school-master- In some countries she is conductor of tramcars and ■ in others is righteously indignant because she cannot get a certificate as an engineij driver. And when woman is righteously indignant the end -if authority is near. She no longer weeps her way into the defended citadel. She has learned a trick j worth two of that. j Thus woman, while man solemnly I ]thought- he was taking care of her, has been ; ; sedulously looking after herself. She has! ; accused him of wife-beating and drunken-1 ; ness, of being a spendthrift and a wastrel, |of having been a tyrant all down the ages ! —until the poor fellow really begins to j 'think there •* some truth in what she |says. And all the time the women who | want work have been collaring all the jobs, ! until—with true feminine lack of logic—it 1 suddenly strikes the average housewife that' , j nobody is left for domestic service. Hence j her tears! It doesn't occur to her that a [Married Woman's Property Act mid plenty of girls for the kitchen and to answer the door-bell are so inconsistent with one another that it isn't possible to have both. Yet it isn't. The revolt of woman was industrial as well as political and social . and while she can earn her living comfort- , ably ill simp or in otlice, in school, in fac- , tory, or in hospital, stay in the kitchen .or make the beds she won't. And why blame her? That women hate housework is self-evident from the eagerness with i which they get somebody else to do it for them at the first opportunity. ! Am! here is where man is proving his usefulness, that poor man whom the ' modern woman thought she could do so j easily without. He, is taking up the disliI cloth that woman has flung down, is arming himself with her broom, is practising ' 1 1ho proper smile for greeting callers and | | the useful frown for those who are only ' leaving bills. He will scrub the floors that ' i Mary has fumed from with disdain, wash] the clothes that the charwoman will have none of. boil potatoes as they ought to ibe boiled and haven't been for years, and warm the midnight milk for the darling ,j baby. And he will be happy because he ■ has' at last found something to do, some iob from which women will not try to ' dispossess. There is only one sad note in this happy , future—the poor setrant-boy, we are told, ' doesn t want to go out much. The butcher] . never woos him. The post man never puts ' a greeting note to his whistle for him. ] The milkman never tries to steal a kiss] ' behind his door. The policeman is never waiting at the corner when he goes to j buy a postage stamp. Nobody takes him] to"the shilling seats at His Majesty's, or , troubles to persuade him that if. is much' I funnier at Fuller's. And nobody patrols Queen-street every night in the dim hope ' of meeting him- Sad, isn't it? Yet it is ' surely enough in this world of womenworkers that a poor boy can find something to do. " . j