DOMESTIC SERVICE.

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1425, 10 November 1923, Page 2

DOMESTIC SERVICE.

SKILLED 'AND HONOURABLE PROFESSION.

The cabled summary of the report of the committee which, under the auspices of the Ministry of Labour, has been making inquiry respecting the domestic servant problem in England, does not convey the impression that the findings are going to be of great assistance in relieving shortage of domestic labour. It was not anticipated that they would. The committee heard a great deal of evidence of one kind and another bearing upon the conditions of domestic service, but it is scarcely surprising that it has apparently not been able to seize upon any specific evils as requiring removal. It sapiently observes that the intimate relationship between domestic assistants and their employers is the crux of both the happiness and the unhappiness of domestic service. That is no new discovery. Given always the ideal employer and the ideal employee, there would probably be no problem to worry about. But human nature is a baffling quantity, and it is very closely involved in this particular economic question. The committee urges organisations and individuals to do their utmost to pro.mote the provision of better social, recreational, and educational advantages for domestic workers, and to “ uphold the dignity of domestic service as a skilled and honourable profession.” This is excellent advice, but unfortunately it is not apparent thut talk, which there has been in abundance, respecting the need for raising the status of the domestic worker, has ever led to much practical result. It is probably an inevitable symptom of the age in which we live that domestic service has become increasingly unpopular as a sphere of employment among young women. The fact that there is a shortage of domestic assistants contemporaneously with a vast amount of unemployment in the Old Country is surely significant. It may be suspected that domestic service is unpopular in the modern outlook oif those from whom its recruits might be drawn, precisely because it is domestic service. When all is| there is no outstanding reason why it should be popular. It is probably only the elect who find real enjoyment in domestic duties, and the housewife who performs those duties in her own home is in a different position from the employee who performs them in the home of another. The “ skilled and honourable profession ” ideal becomes a matter of considerable compromise in general practice. In the extent to which maid servants are the subject of caricature generally of stupid caricature —as deprecated by the committee of inquiry, we have no new development, but an almost traditional attitude, reprehensible no doubt, but not unintelligible. For that reason the committee’s earnest hope that “ the press, dramatists, and humorists will realise that they often probably unintentionally inflict pain and increase the difficulties of the position” may not be realised to the extent desired. ' Certain types of character, as discoverable in connection with certain occupations, will, it is to be apprehended, continue to furnish contribution to the humorous side of life; There is no exclusive lampooning of the domestic worker. Still it cannot conduce to the popularity of domestic service that, being itself a very serious matter, it should seem so often to be taken anything but seriously by the onlooker.