HIRING: PAST AND PRESENT

Otago Witness, Issue 2996, 16 August 1911, Page 87

HIRING: PAST AND PRESENT

(Copyright.)

It is not a matter to be wondered at that in the question of pei’sonal service, its conditions and reward, a great number of customs and usages, varying in different countries and even in different districts, should have been piled up through the centuries about an apparently simple mutual bargain. From the days of simple slavery in the days of Greece and Rome —• a condition of life, by the way, which was by no means so abhorrent in those ages as it sounds to the freedom-loving races of to-day—to our modern registry office or employment bureau is a very far cry, asd a good many survivals of old customs mark the stages of transition. It sounds, of course, to modem sensibilities somewhat cold-blooded and revolting to hear of human beings sold like cattle and handed oyer, without themselves having any say in the matter, from one master to another. In times when might was emphatically right, however, freedom from the point of view of the weak was occasionally rather a doubtful blessing, and the slave of a kind, and above all a powerful, master was at any rate sure of protection, food, and shelter in the all too frequent times of trouble. HUMAN CHATTELS. Ihe slave markets of Greece and Rome have been more than once resorted to by novelists as a setting for incidents and characters, and Lord Lytton, in the “Last Days of Pompeii,” gives a graphic account of the procedure, when the mistress (or rather owner) of the blind girl Nydia recounts how she acquired her. “Staphyla,” she said, “died one day, and I went into the market to buy me another slave. But, by the. gods! they were all grown so dear since I had bought poor Staphyla, and money was so scarce, that I was about to leave the place in despair, when a merchant plucked me by the robe : ‘ Mistress,’ said he, ‘dost thou want a slave cheap? I have a child to sell, a bargain. She is but little, and almost an infant, it is true; but she is quick and quiet, docile and clever, sings well and broiders, and is of good blood, I assure you.’ ‘Of what country?’ said I. ‘Thessalian.’ I asked the merchant his price; it was moderate, and I bought her at once. . . . My friends, guess my ast. uisbment when I found she was blind . . . Doubtless the Thessalian kidnapper had stolen the blind girl from gentle parents!” The Thessalian slave-merchants, it may be remarked, were noted for kidnapping young persons of birth and education. In the same work, Lord Lytton also gives the formal method of such a transaction as the sale of a slave —the question, “Au dabis?” (will you give?), replied to by “Dabitur” (it will be given). THE SAXON THRALL. The opening chapter of “Ivanhoe” contains a description of the badge of serfdom borne by Saxon thralls—a brass ring soldered about the neck, so as to require the use of a file for its removal, and bearing .he words, “Garth, the son of Beowulph, is the bam tlrrall of Oedric of Rotherwood.” Readers of the book will remember the formula with which Cedric gives Gurth his liberty. “ ‘Theow and Esne art thou no longer,’ said Cedric, touching him with a wand, “Folk-free and sacless art thou in town and from town in the forest ,as in the field. A hid© of land I give to thee in my steads of Walbringham, from me and mine to thee and thine aye and for ever, and God’s malison on his head who this gainsays!” The words “theow” and “esne” signify respectively “halter” and “shaoide,” hence “serf” and “bondman.” “Theow” is most probably derived from “teow,” flax, hemp, halter, equivalent to “thrall”_ or “thirl,” a man thirled, or bound; while “esne” comes from “eieen,” iron, signifying the wearing of the iron or brass collar. To be “folk-free and SvTcless” is to be free araopg the people, and without feudal crime in being so. THE MODERN SERVANT PROBLEM.

These remote ages of personal service, however, are so long gone by and so dia- j metrically opposite to the modern idea of i the transaction, that they perhaps do j not, strictly speaking, com© under the! classification of “hiring” pure and simple. 1 Xowad,aye the position of .a domestic ser-1 vant is pretty clearly defined by statute, ! and, broadly speaking, the law is very' much on the side of the servant rather than the employer, at all events in prac- ! tice. For example, a servant possessing ; nothing but the clothes she stands up j in may claim wages in lieu of notice, and ; will probably get them ; but if she de- i parts without notice the employer has no j remedy against her, for the simple rea- j son that she is “not worth powder and • shot.” The endless discussion of the j servant problem over the suburban teacups would seem to suggest that there is certainly room for .a good many re- ! forms in the modern method of employing i servants, and not least among these should | he a complete overhauling of the registry office system. Many of these establishments are of a highly objectionable nature, and are veritable traps for innocent country girls seeking situations, or young servants whose first place has brought them into contact with the bad employers who

share with bad servants the bility for a good part of the great servant problem. Some registries, again, are positive frauds upon employers. Who has ever secured one of these advertised paragons at next to nothing a year? COUNTRY CUSTOMS. A somewhat different system still prevails in country districts. Naturally it would bs impossible in the case of a faurm, especially a fairly large one, to put up with the dissolving view of Claras and Fannys and Ethelindas which provides the suburban ladies with the minor shocks and sensations of life. Therefore, both local usage and legal requirements made the contract entered upon at “hiring-fair” much more binding on both sides than an ordinary engagement of a servant. Hiring-fairs take place anually at the centres of agricultural districts, generally at the market town, and the date is as a rule just after the harvest is well over, very often about old Michaelmas Day, in the middle of October. There are all sorts of local peculiarities attaching to these fairs._ In the West Country the hiring fair is always known as “the mop,” and the reason for the name is rather curious. The servant maids standing in the marketplace carry—or used to carry, for the custom is now almost extinct—a mop or broom to announce their vocation to possible employers, the men being similarly distinguished by a bunch of straw stuck in the hatband. Engagements at “hirings” are invariably for a year, since busy farmers’ wives could not tolerate the likelihood of being deserted by their household assistants in the midst of seed-time or harvest. HIRING-FAIRS. The Yorkshire term for the hiring-fair is equally curious, the “statty” or “stattys.” This is derived from the “statute,” meaning probably that the fair is held in the statutory quarter-day. Here the bargain between the employer and the servant is clinched by the latter receiving silver coin which is known very quaintly as a “God’s penny,” a ceremony which is rather similar to the formal acceptance of the “King’s shilling” from the recruiting sergeant, which picturesque proceeding, by the way, is not _ now binding as of old. In Ireland the hiring is generally on the occasion of the “pattern” (or “patron”) feast, the name day of the Church, like the Lancashire “wakes.” Of course, the “mop,” “statty,” or “hiring,” is also a general fair day, and show, cheapjacks, and other attractions throng the market-place, together with the situation-seekers, these latter dressed in their best, and , attended sometimes by sweethearts or wives, partly to witness their success or non-success, and partly to prevent the last year’s savings from being wheedled out of their pockets by the attractions of the fair day. Many of the picturesque features of the hiring have departed; the snow-white smock of the labourer, the carter’s whip and leggings, the lasses’ mops, the harvester’s straw band no longer proclaim the wearer’s vocation; they have given place to smart, ready-made suits for the men and town finery for the girls, just as the continuation classes and scientific farming, the hygienic dairying and servant maid’s bicycles of to-day would have called forth the derision and disapproval of a vanished generation.