Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6 1909. THE DOMESTIC HELP PROBLEM.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 4370, 6 February 1909, Page 2

Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6 1909. THE DOMESTIC HELP PROBLEM.

this above all—to thine own self be true , Ind it must follow as the night the day Thou canst not then be false to any man Shakespeare.

It is interesting to note that the Principal of the Thames High School is including among other modifications of the school curriculum a course in Domestic Science. This goes to the root of the domeitic help problem on one side, namely the employers side. For there can be no doubt that the inadequacy and inefficiency of mistresses in the past days has tended ; powerfully to precipitate the present domestic situation. We admit that this is but one of the causes of the shortage of domestic help, but it has been a very potent cause. Girls of initiative and independer.ee of judgment, the very qualities which colonial life has done so much to foster, have wearied of the impositions of half-trained inconsiderate mistresses, who in too many cases have been placed in the pssition of employers. We are not saying fora moment that this want of domestic training is peculiarly a feature of New Zealand life, far from it. But it will be admitted that in every country there is a proportion of inadequate mistre ses, ths sort of mistresses who do not know when they have exacted enough work in a day. Higher education unfortunately will not cure this evil unless it includes such a course as the principal of the Thames High School proposes to include in his syllabus. But the inclusion of such a branch will tend to [obviate one difficulty of the servant question.

Without due attention to domestic scieuce the tendency of higher education will be to provide us with a class of incompetent mistresses, mistresses whose inability to rule a household satisfactorily would inevitably tend to discourage and demoralize the help which is being brought from home to supplement the local supply. According to the Ohinemun Gazette of last Wednesday, a New Zealand lady of distinct qualifications for the undertaking is about to supplement the efforts of the British Women’s Emigration Society by selecting suitable young women in England for emigration to New Zealand. Each young woman is to be the subject of a personal interview and to be fully accredited before she is sent out. But naturally, in a country like the Dominion, where the range of domestic duties is distinctly various, and where there are not commonly four or five girls kept to discharge the duties of the establishment, it requires more than common ability on the part of

the mistress to keep the domestic wheels running smoothly, and to enable her to know how far the work of the girl employed requires to be supplemented by herself. It will require, in fact, a thoroughly scientific training on the part of the coming mistress to fit her to retain and satisicctorilv utilize the help which the British Wox »’s Emigration Society proposes to supply her with. Otherwise the immigrating domestic helpers will simply serve to augment the staffs employed in the Dominion factories.

TREATMENT OF AFFLICTED CHILDREN. The school for backward children at Otekaike, which is only quite recently under way, is already securing satisfactory returns for the painstaking efforts put forth by those in charge of the unfortunate children placed there for treatment. The methods applied are such as would be prompted by the best insight, and finest instincts of the true child lover. children have imparted to them the very rudiments of human education, even being taught how to articulate wlere they have not hitherto acquired that elementary art. One child who had never developed any faculty for communicating either thought or intelligence to those atound him was taken into the hay field and taught to toss the hay over his teacher in play. This was

absolutely the first indication of response to another human being. The results which may be secured by patient, sympathetic treatment have been wonderfully instanced in the case of Miss Helen Keller, who is both blind and deaf. This lady, whose marked intellectual powers might have wholly languished for lack of vent was brought into touch with her fellows by the sense of touch. To her this sense had been made the medium of both articula-

tjon and perception, and she is able to express her beautiful thoughts, and receive the communications of her friends in the most wonderful way. She is a lady of distinct intellectual culture ; yet but for the loving wisdom which applied itself to 'the realease of her powers she might have pined intellectually and

spiritually for want of intercourse with others, both by personal contact and by the study of literature. If there is one feature of the present age which among others proves

that humanitarianism is gaining ground it is this spirit of rational care for the afflicted, the effort which is expended in striving to render themself helpful and companionable instead of allowing them to be rele-

gated as so much human waste, to unpitied oblivion.