THE DEARTH OF DOMESTIC SERVANTS,

Otago Witness, Issue 2978, 12 April 1911, Page 14

THE DEARTH OF DOMESTIC SERVANTS,

A short cablegram recently published from Melbourne read as follows: —“A deputation from the Women Workers’ Union protested to Mr Murray, the State Premier, .against the importation of English domestic servants,” and the Premier’s reply was ‘‘that there was a dearth of domestics in Victoria, and he was not afraid of immigration lowering the rate of wages.” This reply might have referred with equal force to Dunedin and its neighbourhood. But how absurd the demand is! Farmers’ wives hunting the towns, their own neighbourhood, the bar a country, everywhere and anywhere for girls to help them out with their work, and failing to get them, clamouring for domestics with as much insistence as the grass has demanded moisture for the last five years, with less apparent chance of being satisfied, doing their own work and the work of two-or three other women, and knocking themselves up, till the doctor orders complete cessation from manual labour for three months at the seaside. Painful cases present themselves daily,’ and forsooth the country is to be formed into a close corporation, worked for the benefit of the Labour Unions. Many of the farmers themselves who are distressed to see their wives so harassed are becoming little better than domestic drudges. The other day a burly farmer, whose accession of adipose tissue is becoming a consideration, and whose income easily runs into four figures, might have been observed bending over the wash-tub taking his chances of apoplexy, because his better half could not secure the help she required, and was physically unable to do the work herself. If 2000 girls were imported to Otago to-morrow they would all be engaged in a week. There is a good opening here for the Eugenics 'Society. What prospect ahead is there for chidren when their mothers are perpetually on the verge of neurasthenia, or some other nervous breakdown through overwork? Things are in a bad way when the mistresses of large establishments have to do all their own work and cannot get assistance. At all the busy times of the year—harvest, shearing," turnip-thinning, threshing, etc.—the pinch is most severely felt. With from 12 to 20 men to cook for, the children to attend to. the housework to go on, the washing to do. preserves for the year to make, and a hodt of other duties of which men are ignorant, few farmers’ wives gei through these periods without incurring the risk of serious illness. This is no imaginary picture, but a common experience in the country to-day. If this state of things is allowed to continue the farmers’ industry will be half paralysed, and the brake ’ driven hard on to the Dominion’s progress.