OVERSEA SETTLEMENT.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18017, 4 November 1920, Page 5

OVERSEA SETTLEMENT.

WOMEN’S WORK IN NEW •ZEALAND. (Christchurch Press Correspondent.) LONDON, September 9. The report which has been prepared for the Overseas Settlement Department by Miss J. M. Girdler and Miss G. Watkins on conditions in New Zealand and the suitability of the country for the settlement of Btitish women is at present in the proof stage. It is expected, however, that it will shortly be ready to be laid on the table of the House of Commons. Miss Gladys Pott, chairman of the executive committee of the Society for Oversea Settlement of British Women, who has been investigating conditions in Canada, makes some general statements concerning the prospects in the various Dominions. ‘‘There is an enormous demand in each of the Dominions,” she says, “for women who are willing to take up some form of home service work. There are signs, too, of an increasing demand for women workers in certain manufacturing industries. But the overwhelming demand is for girls who are familiar with some domestic work. It would be idle to minimise the fact that real household work lies before them; but. on Hie whole, the conditions in the Dominions are freer and better than hire. In very many households two servants are kept, and the wife almost invariably helps with the domestic duties. The Dominions are also well ahead in improving the conditions of all workers. New Zealand, for instance, has just started a hostel for domestic servants, where the girls can live and have their own independent lives after they have done their day’s work. This is a scheme which, it has been suggested, would be attractive here at home. New Zealand has actually put it into practice. Again, it is an advantage to any worker in any form of activity to live in a country where the demand of the labour markets is always in excess of the supply. “But there is one qualification, more than any other,” adds Miss Pott, “which is necessary to success in settlement oversea. Good physique and good character, with plenty of determination and resource, ate essential to those who are thinking of emigrating. Life in the Dominions undoubtedly offers many more and wider opportunities than in our over-populous cities ot the Motherland, but only to those w’ho have pluck, good purpose, and possess the capacity for genuine work.”