The Daily News. FRIDAY, JUNE 17. DOMESTIC SERVANTS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 58, 17 June 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, JUNE 17. DOMESTIC SERVANTS.

There is always an unsatisfied demand for domestic servants in New Zealand. It is ever difficult to get a domestic servant and harder still to keep her when you get her. Domestic service is unpopular, especially in remote or semi- \ remote places. Nobody blames girls for disliking domestic service, if the girls are fitted to take a (butter position in the world. Most girls who are doomed to pass along from one employer to another, know they are cut out for duchesses. A servant girl who believes she ought to be a duekess never learns tl» domestic arts. If she marries a mere every-day man, he learns something. The Women's Emigration Association of London Iras apparently been sending forty or fijfty domestic servants per year to New Zealand for a long time. They are selected for the physical fitnesit and are, according to the matron who •has accompanied the last batch of twenty (just arrived hy the Arawa), the best class of working girl Britain produces. I That is to say, they are of the finest ; stock the world produces. England does a large export business in domestic servants of a good physical stamp, and it may be said here that nothing the Old Country sends away to the outlying dominions is half so valuable as men, women and children. The transplanting of Britons is one of the most important works undertaken. In respect of these girls who have just come to this country, we are told that they belong to the poorer class and that the work of sending them to the colonies is philamthropic. Their fate if they stayed at home-would ibe "that they would probably marry men who were out of work for nine months in the year." The fact that they have ibeen reared in comparative poverty and have survived to be healthy women, is the best evidence of physical capacity. They are therefore a real strength to this country. Quite apart from the domestic help they will give to the women of New Zealand, their coming has an Imperial and national aspect. All new countries cry aloud for English women, and Canada cries the 'loudest, having seen earlier than we the potential motherhood of women as distinct from their mere temporary use as domestic servants. Regarded merely as helps to other women, the importation of British girls means that fewer New Zealand girls will undertake domestic service, and it remains a remarkable fact that British girls become so quickly "colonised" that they soon learn theff sister's distaste for service. There are tens of thousands of serving peonle in Britain, and the fact that domestics in the Old Country are on a far better footing than fhpv are in the colonies means that the self-reliant girl who leaves the. Old Land has something further in view I than mere work for other folk. Still, apart from every consideration of help, I the importation of British-born women I is of the utmost importance to the colonies, which have more need of new Wood and 'bone >and sinew than of any other elements usable in the forming of a nation.. i^t-"^