THE WIFE’S SHARE OF THE WORK.

New Zealand Times, Volume XLX, Issue 8163, 15 August 1887, Page 2

THE WIFE’S SHARE OF THE WORK.

“ The domestic comfort of the selector’s home can to a great extent be judged of by a glance at the woodpile, ” writes the agrionltural reporter of the Queenslander, and continues :—“When I see at the back of the house two or three heavy ironbark logs marked all over with axe cuts and no small firewood about, I knew the cooking cannot be good, for it is done under unreasonable difficulties. lam loth to bring an accusation of ungallantry against our hard-working selectors of homesteads and farms, but nevertheless it is a fact that far too many of them do not study in the least how they can save the labor of their wives. Such a simple erection as a roof over the wood heap is seldom to be seen; and when a small pile of stove wood has been cut by the men or the boys it has often only been done at the expense of much coaxing from the wife and mother, and done with great seluctance upon the part of the males. They will doubtless come in from the milking-house and grumble because the breakfast is not ready, whereas if some kindling wood had been cut the day before and carried to the kitchen fire the wife would have been perhaps able to nurse the baby, attend to the children, and prepare the breakfast. So it is with many things. Scrapers may easily bo made by man or boy and fixed at the doors (and used too) but they are not, and extra scrubbing of floors is the result. A barrowload of gravel might be wheeled to the back door aud spread about, but it is not. Farm washing of the clothes is notoriously hard work, but it often has to be done by women when standing at a bench outside and exposed to the heat of the sun’s rays, and perhaps on the banka of the creek several hundred yards from the house, and up the steep banks of which the woman has to carry the pails of water. It undoubtedly is this want of home comforts that makes bush life so unpopular with even bush-born girls. They note the wife of the town artisan with hia snug little cottage, the wood brought to the door already cut into small billets, the patent stove in place of the big smoky chimney and the camp oven, the handy and clean back yard with waterpipe laid up to the washing-tup, and they compare all this with the too-often discomforts of bush life. Our farmers, Germans included, must pay more attention to the comfort of their women, for housework is incessant, and lasts long hours after that of the men ceases.